Basic tips for businesses to protect from online fraud during and after the COVID-19 crisis

The quarantine imposed by the governments around the world to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant increase in e-commerce. The societal confinement and the fear of infection have triggered not only an increase in online shopping but also in fraud.
Avoiding risks is key during this uncertain period, not just for users, but for businesses too. At Easy Payment Gateway we believe that it is essential for e-businesses to have all necessary security measures in place, allowing them to detect and block suspicious transactions which could have negative impacts on their bottom line.
For this reason, we share three basic tips for e-businesses to shield themselves from any suspicious transactions or attempted scams:

1. Always have your systems updated and follow the latest security protocols. This may seem obvious, but not updating the systems on which the site operates can increase the chances of fraud. Online scams are becoming more and more sophisticated, and so require increasingly robust systems to combat them. They advise delegating this task to specialised companies which can offer complete business security, and peace of mind when operating the 3D secure protocol. This prevents fraud in online payments made with credit or debit cards by authenticating the identity of the buyer and confirming that he or she is the cardholder.
2. Implement Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), as included in the Revised European Directive on Payment Services (PSD2), which allows us to verify whether the buyer is indeed who they claim to be. This mechanism requires that the user when making payments, can provide at least two of the following: something that only the user knows (like a password or pin), something that the user owns (like a postcode or mobile phone number) and/or something that is inherent to the user (like a fingerprint or iris recognition). In this way, the owner of the site has a full guarantee on the total security of the transaction.
3. Detect patterns of fraudulent activity. To do this, sites can develop their own system or opt for a fraud manager that is already on the market. In comparison with the first option, the second is much more affordable since it avoids the company having to use their own specialised technical resources, making the process simpler and easier to handle. In addition, it is important that the payment service manager allows for the creation of lists in which the company can choose what data needs to be entered by the client, giving it complete control over what it allows (whitelist) and what it blocks (blacklist). For example, the company can set a block on a transaction if a user has made several purchases over 200 euros and tries to make another transaction for the same amount on the same day. The system would then automatically block the transaction.

Easy Payment Gateway provides a fraud manager, which, in addition to supporting two-step authentication and the 3D Secure protocol, allows the customer to simply set filters which can automatically block an operation. Thanks to this, companies can reduce online fraud by between 40% and 70%.