DNS - Ethoca Announces Free Collaborative Anti-Fraud Service for Online Merchants

Ethoca Ltd., a provider of fraud detection services, has introduced a free collaborative anti-fraud service for online merchants. In this regard, the company has started accepting applications for the new free service, which is based on company’s flagship Ethoca360 Signals technology. The free service will be targeting at helping online merchants prevent chargebacks and card-not-present, or “CNP,” fraud.

According to Ethoca officials, the company’s Ethoca360 Signals is a fraud detection service that checks transactions against the Global Fraud Alliance, or “GFA,” repository in real-time. Thes service also identifies matches and patterns that indicate either fraud risk or a probable good order through intuitive color-coded “Warning Signals”.

The Warning Signals that specify fraud risk are referred to as “negative signals”, while good transaction histories indicate “positive signals.”

Ethoca's new service, which is scheduled to be rolled out in April 2010, is a commercial grade service that makes the “negative signals” available for free - from Ethoca360 Signals. This free negative signal service will augment merchants’ existing fraud management practices, thereby adding information that can't be obtained anywhere else to payment processing and fraud screening processes.

According to Ethoca, the company’s new free negative signals service can identify a history of chargebacks, fraud, data inconsistencies that are linked to the current order and other unwanted behaviors.

Merchants who have signed up now and until further notice, Ethoca will keep the negative signals version of Ethoca360 Signals free forever, company officials said.

According to Andre Edelbrock, CEO and co-founder of Ethoca, the company was founded on one simple fact, that knowing more about your customers enables better fraud prevention and that only through collaboration can merchants get a 360-degree picture of what they are dealing with.

Ethoca’s free negative signals service will help in stemming the losses that are suffered by companies to online fraud each year. The negative signals information can be incorporated directly into merchants' fraud scoring, or used as decision support when manually reviewing orders.

“Our goal in making this negative service free to merchants selling in a card-not-present environment is to help all of them spot high-risk transactions that would otherwise have been missed,” Edelbrock said. “For example, does a credit card, name, or email address have a history of chargebacks, blacklist entries, rejections, or other negative data?”

“Users will see immediately which orders match any negative data in the GFA database. By collaborating on a global scale, online merchants have the ability to make fraud a problem of the past, and by making our Negative Signals service available for free, we are one step closer to making that happen,” he added.

Furthermore, online merchants who have signed-up and want richer information that can speed and automate a higher degree of fraud screening are able to upgrade to the full version of Ethoca360 Signals that provides both positive context as well as negative signals.