19th June 2023
Airlines have been looking at ways to target high-value high flyers and one of the tools they have been using is status match campaigns.
There is also a need to keep an eye on considerable volume of illegitimate approaches for the same. What if a fraudster or a scammer is trying to avail such an offer?
In a webinar on identifying and stopping loyalty status fraud by Loyalty Security Alliance, StatusMatch by Loyalty Status Co‘s Mark Ross-Smith said that when it comes to areas like request for status match spike in activity is an indication (what is triggering a spike, look at the factors like location, risky IP address, fake documents etc. and identify fraud-related patterns). Indicators are many but look at the volume first (any benchmark can be considered – airline-specific or industry specific).
As for the fraud prevention mechanism used by his company, he mentioned that it is vital to keep an eye on bad actors without really compromising the experience of customers, who are mostly high-value loyalty customers. One of the tools that StatusMatch has been using is Ekata, a Mastercard company’s account opening offering. The team chose to focus on behind-the-scenes risk score of each applicant. When the score came back high, meaning the applicant could be a risky one, the team was able to internally introduce strategic friction.
Airlines need to look at the entire journey of a user to curb loyalty fraud.
As in case of StatusMatch, count on data and technology to seamlessly allow customers to match their status when switching to a new airline or hotel #loyaltyprogram or any other activity they are looking for, and add friction (more checks) only when there is an anomaly.
Ross-Smith also spoke about illegitimate activity that is currently going on Telegram and Taobao to trade in loyalty-related currency. It is important to keep a vigil on how fraudsters are gaming the system, because when FFPs open up to let any scammer attain top-tier status with unscrupulous means it also means that they can get repeatedly targeted because there are fraud groups or networking that takes place among fraudsters, too.
By Ritesh Gupta, Ai Events
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