Euroline: detecting 80-90% of merchant fraud

Euroline, the acquiring arm of SEB Kort, is one of the market leading Merchant Acquirers in Sweden and the leading cross-border acquirer in the Nordic markets. SEB Kort administrates 2.7 million chargecards and credit cards in the Nordic countries, working with nearly 200,000 merchants and processing over 300 million card transactions every year.

Merchant acquirers provide point of sale terminal and transaction processing facilities to merchants, such as high street shops or online vendors, to enable them to accept credit and debit card payments. With only a short window in which to authorise transactions, Euroline needs to ensure it has adequate protection to prevent funds being lost through fraud and defaulting merchants.

The threat comes from fraudsters attacking organisations and high risk, collusive and fraudulent merchants, with a growing trend of internet fraud. While losses from these threats do not always financially impact Euroline, excessive chargeback ratios could lead to financial penalty from the international card payment schemes. Additionally, card schemes demand compliance with a range of security processes for the protection of all the parties involved. Non-compliance can lead to serious penalties for acquiring organisations.

"We just have to look at the results; we believe we are detecting 80-90% of merchant fraud.”

To meet these challenges, SEB Kort chose Secana Merchant Monitor from Experian. Secana Merchant Monitor provides an online system for Euroline to monitor, investigate and take action against fraudulent merchants and those who are exposed to fraud, as well as managing compliance and merchant risk in the card payment operation.

It provides transactional surveillance, giving Euroline the ability to build individual profiles of each merchant, enabling it to monitor significant changes in over 70 aspects of the merchant behaviour. All in all a complete overview of a merchant’s behaviour and operations.

SEB Kort was already working with Experian using Secana Card Protector, which tackles the challenges of issuer fraud. Recognising that a similar architecture and functionality could bring significant benefits to detecting and reducing merchant fraud was a further reason to go with Secana Merchant Monitor. The result was the avoidance of significant fraud losses, including a single case worth more than €50,000 and an immediate ROI.

John Mossblad, SEB Kort Fraud Prevention and Security said “With Experian, we have found a partner who knows what they are talking about, knows our business and how to solve our problems. Moreover, with Secana Merchant Monitor, we have found a solution that protects our business. We just have to look at the results; we believe we are detecting 80-90% of merchant fraud.”

Contact us for further discussions about this article