Fraugster boosts chargeback protection for travel merchants post pandemic

Fraugster, an AI payment intelligence company, together with Worldline, a global leader in secure payments and trusted transactions, has confidently enabled travel merchants to weather the storm of the Covid-19 pandemic with its Chargeback Protection Solution. The solution eliminates chargeback losses for merchants by taking full liability for fraudulent transactions. At the same time, advanced AI trained on global payment data makes more accurate decisions to boost approval rates. Innovations in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) allow merchants to go-live without historical data by leveraging a new deep learning model.

With the outbreak of Covid-19, global travel was grounded. This caused mass cancellations and a scramble for refunds, but also created new opportunities for fraudsters to strike overburdened travel operators (hotels, airlines and OTAs), and take advantage of weak points in the system. In addition, there was a surge in so-called “angry chargebacks” where customers claim not to have authorised a transaction, usually in response to being frustrated by a cancellation or booking change. Covid-19 fraud patterns and consumer payment behaviour were significantly different to those pre-pandemic. Similarly, data inconsistencies limited the ability to identify and prevent certain types of fraud attacks like last minute cancellations on short term bookings. Chargeback rates jumped to over 3%, versus a baseline of under 0.5% in normal circumstances.

“Iberostar experienced a massive increase in fraud pressure during the pandemic. We were pleased that partners Fraugster and Worldline were able to act so quickly to design a new AI model specifically for us. In a few short months we reduced the Chargeback rate from 2.76% to 0.07%, which was a fantastic achievement,” stated Ferran Llompart, Corporate Treasury Director, Iberostar.

Additional factors make chargeback protection more relevant than ever. The first is that the total cost of managing chargebacks has risen to nearly 3x of the original transaction value, according to a Fraugster analysis. For verticals like travel, where average order values are in excess of $750, this implies a total cost of over $2000 per fraudulent transaction.

Secondly, 80% of online merchants are reporting an increase in first party fraud (also referred to as “friendly fraud”) where credit card credentials are intentionally or mistakenly abused. This trend is particularly acute in online gaming environments. These chargebacks are very difficult to prevent or mitigate and are costing companies margin, with limited recourse to recovering chargeback losses.

Together these trends are increasing merchants’ exposure to chargeback liability and are driving up the total costs related to chargebacks. With Fraugster’s Chargeback Protection solution merchants are able to significantly reduce the costs attributable to managing chargebacks, plus chargeback losses and fees, with little to no integration effort.

“Fraugster’s approach to addressing  chargebacks is to use a combination of machine learning and behavioral science to build a sharper picture of the transaction in question. This means merchants can provide a more seamless buying experience for legitimate customers while also preventing fraudulent transactions from getting through – this includes transactions that may turn into chargeback fraud later on,” stated Christian Mangold, CEO of Fraugster. “We are pleased that global brands have increased their revenue of between 5-16%  since adopting Fraugster’s Chargeback Protection solution product and report a steadier and more predictable financial coverage for chargebacks and bottom line impacts.”