13th December, 2021
Travel merchants are looking at the prowess of data, trying to gain from collaboration across the payment ecosystem and relying on fraud prevention tools to increase approval rates without false positives or negative impact to the customer experience.
“Competition is intense in the travel industry,” asserted Sondra Feinberg, Global Workload Lead – Fraud, Microsoft. In this context, it is imperative to make sure no “inconvenience” is caused to loyal customers.
“Analyse both internal and external data sources,” recommended Sondra, during Ai’s webinar, “NDC – Retrofitting Payments”, today.
Sondra also highlighted certain airline/ travel sector-specific trends that need to be delved into while controlling fraud:
- Considering the last-minute plans and the fact over 70% of mobile hotel bookings are made within one day of a stay, same day reservations are 4.3 times more likely to be fraudulent, said Sondra.
- Look at internal fraud – “Rescreen for fraud when a booking changes. Screen employees making the change,” she said.
- The teams responsible for managing different types of abuse may be located in different departments, using disparate tools, makes it challenging to take a unified approach to managing risk. “Use consortium approach for alerts,” recommended Sondra.
Chargeback management
Harlan Hutson, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Chargebacks911 spoke about dispute prevention, response and intelligence. “Take a real-time approach to intercept disputes and avoid chargebacks with transaction details or refund confirmation,” said Hutson. He also spoke about friendly fraud and how to respond to illegitimate disputes. “(Look) at the true source of chargebacks and make informed decisions with accurate and actionable data,” he said.
Other speakers:
- IATA has been working on guiding principles for NDC payment workflows. A streamlined payment process has to be in place in order to capitalize on initiatives like NDC. Amine Boulaghmen, Head of Payment Facilitation Solutions, IATA, provided an update and referred to the significance of omni-channel engagement.
- Valentin Gina, Market Development Manager, Datatrans AG spoke about the role of SCA/ 3DS for NDC.
- Rich Thompson, Global Airlines Strategist, Riskified underlined the significance of automation, and how automated decisions can match airlines’ rapid changes in volume. With offerings like chargeback guarantee, airlines can enhance the online customer experience by declining fewer consumers out of a fear of fraud.
- Laurie Gablehouse, Global Head of Travel Solutions, Ingenigo ePayments, mentioned that airlines have had a closer look at various processes over the last 20 month or so, related to refunds, strategic expenses (for e. g. cost of a booking), NDC along with other payment and fraud-related aspects.
The session also featured Paul van Alfen.
By Ritesh Gupta
Ai Team
