RISK IDENT Lends Award-Winning Protection to Mobile Payments, eCommerce

Security in mobile payments; it’s never been so vital, or so often questioned. The only way to ensure that the perceived lack of security in mobile payments doesn’t overwhelm the move to get more users in the fold is to constantly improve security to take on the growing number of threats in the field. Recently, the eCommerce Awards 2018 show in London handed a big win to one such technology: RISK IDENT.

RISK IDENT tipped us off about its big win recently, taking top honors for the Best eCommerce Technology Innovation at the event. RISK IDENT offers a “transactional risk management” system that allows for safe and secure data handling. In handling that data, it allows for better decision-making and a reduction of the potential gray area between acceptance and declination, a point that poses the greatest risk for payment processors.

When a system accepts too readily, fraud goes undetected. Take the other extreme and decline too quickly, and suddenly, perfectly valid transactions are blocked and customers go unsatisfied. Since RISK IDENT works with several major retailers, it’s been able to build a background of transactions to approve or deny. The system has worked quite well so far, with over 40 billion euros in 2017 secured.

RISK IDENT’s managing director and chief technology officer Felix Eckhardt noted “We’re honoured to have been selected for our innovative approach to fraud prevention. We tackle some of the most grievous threats to eCommerce businesses today including payment fraud, account takeovers and identity theft. As fraudsters continue to develop their tactics day-by-day, our machine-learning based software products are evolving constantly, ensuring that eCommerce businesses are always one step ahead.”

There’s never a bad time to improve security. We’ve seen the impact that security perceptions have on the end user-it’s usually a negative one-and so, the necessity of it weighs heavily on every platform. Or should, anyway. With a growing number of security threats in play, and news of data breaches becoming more frequent, security improvements only get more valuable. The worst news about security in mobile payments is that gains in security result in small if any gains in end users in the short term.

Lapses in security cost big in the short term, however, and this is one of two reasons why security must be pursued. The other reason is that a regular and routine improvement in security is the only thing that will improve perceived security, and thus draw in more users in the long term. Tools like RISK IDENT, therefore, are vital to the long term health of mobile payments, ecommerce, and beyond.