The amount of online payment fraud in the airline booking industry is dropping, a study showed.
Among 142 airlines surveyed between Nov. 17 and Jan. 31, CyberSource Corp. in San Francisco found that their combined fraud losses associated with airfares booked online last year dropped by 17.7%, to $1.4 billion, compared with 2008, the last time CyberSource conducted its airline fraud survey. Visa Inc. bought CyberSource last year.
CyberSource, which released the findings Wednesday, attributes some of the reduction to an increased use of fraud detection tools.
These include computer "fingerprinting," which tracks a computer's activities, and other automated screening products that reject bookings if they suspect fraud.
Airlines surveyed say they used an average of 7.3 fraud-detection tools last year compared with an average of 5.8 in 2008.
Airlines booking tickets online for less than three years experienced higher fraud rates, higher manual review rates and higher reject rates than did more experienced airlines, the survey found.
For example, airlines with more than 10 years of online selling experience manually reviewed an average of 15% of their bookings, while those selling online for less than three years reviewed an average of 53% manually.
Of the airlines surveyed, 90% said they had no major plans to add fraud management staff to help review fraud in bookings manually, said Doug Schwegman, CyberSource's director of customer and market intelligence.
