-
Airlines are investing in technology improve security in an area TSA checkpoints don't cover: credit card fraud.
August 30
To thwart fraud attempts at the earliest stage of a transaction, Turkish Airlines Inc. is linking its website to CyberSource Corp.'s fraud monitoring services.
CyberSource, a unit of Visa Inc., said it will provide the Istanbul airline with its Decision Manager and Performance Monitoring fraud protection programs.
Turkish Airlines purchased CyberSource's services because of company expansion and the continuing fraud threat, not because it was experiencing a major problem, says Akif Khan, CyberSource's director of products and services.
Turkish Airlines, established in 1993 with five airplanes, now has a fleet of 176 aircraft.
Some airlines choose to link fraud protection services to payment gateways or reservation systems. Turkish Airlines will link its website to the services, Khan says.
The service attempts to detect fraud by comparing a ticket-buying transaction against data from an estimated 60 billion transactions scanned by CyberSource.
Decision Manager screens for address and bank identification number validation, compares potential false identity instances against those of other companies and monitors various other parameters that are set up by the client.
Performance Monitoring provides access to a CyberSource expert online to aid clients in analysis, Khan says.
A customer buying a ticket from Turkish Airlines would not be aware the transaction is being screened, Khan says.
"The Decision Manager is integrated into the back end of the website, so the customer never leaves the airline website," Khan says.
The program alerts the airline to possible fraud during the transaction with a "reject" response, allowing the airline to contact the customer while still online.
Approximately 26% of transactions, however, will be reviewed manually, even after an e-ticket has been issued. If a reviewed transaction proves fraudulent, the customer would be contacted and the e-ticket canceled, Khan says.
The program helps deter "friendly fraud" airline ticket cases in which the perpetrator claims the ticket was not used.
Julie Conroy McNelley, senior analyst and fraud expert with Aite Group, agrees that airlines are a significant target for cybercriminals.
"All businesses conducting e-commerce are targets of criminals seeking places where financial transactions are taking place online, and airlines are a key part of that value chain," McNelley says.
For a growing company like Turkish Airlines, keeping up with peers that are enlisting the services of companies with good fraud prevention techniques is important, McNelley says.
"If you are the only one on the block with no fence and no guard dog," she says, "the bad guys will come knocking at your door."
