Last week, Forter and Magnius came together for a fireside chat on payments, fraud prevention, and customer experience in today’s e-commerce environment. Neil Smith, Forter Head of Business Development for EMEA, and Lennart Koopmans, Magnius CEO, discussed how they’re working together to make online commerce safer and easier for consumers around the globe.
Although the COVID-19 situation created significant challenges for merchants in every region of the world, Lennart points out a positive side to the pandemic. When every sale could mean survival for a business, this time served as a catalyst for merchants to rethink the way they’re handling payments and fraud and realize how much business they’re actually losing from false declines and other sources of revenue leakage.
He goes on to stress the importance of partnering with experts in the fraud space, explaining that businesses should focus on their core competencies and leave the fraud management up to a trusted partner. For Magnius, that partner is Forter, with instant “approve” or “decline” decisions that make managing fraud easier for their merchants and gives them peace of mind knowing that their customers are protected.
A Balancing Act
One of the major themes that Neil and Lennart discuss is striking the right balance between maximizing approvals and managing fraud in order to limit chargebacks and other forms of abuse. Many legacy fraud prevention systems use rules-based tools that oftentimes decline legitimate transactions at an alarming rate. Neil describes Forter’s solution as, “opening up the floodgates but with a highly advanced filter” using machine learning to decipher which transactions should be approved and which should be declined.
On top of having to balance customer experience and fraud management, merchants must also continue thinking about the upcoming enforcement of Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) and how that will impact the experience that customers will have when buying online. Once again, Lennart sees SCA as an opportunity to establish more trust in the payments process and give merchants a variety of authentication options to give them the “freedom of choice” in deciding the best way to handle each transaction. He believes that when merchants, payment service providers, and fraud prevention partners all work together, e-commerce will become safer and even more seamless for end consumers, even amid SCA requirements.
The Future of Online Commerce
According to Neil, the future of e-commerce means bringing together consumers, merchants, and partners to create an “ecosystem of trust” and the ability to approve more transactions. What does this look like? Whether it’s accepting alternative payment methods, or understanding the nuances of emerging markets to more accurately understand and weed out fraud, the future of e-commerce will be centered around trust. For more insights into how merchants can turn payments into profits, listen to the full discussion here.
