Sun.Star Pampanga

Holiday fraud coming from PH during pandemic falls

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ANILA Global informatio­n and insights provider TransUnion (NYSE: TRU) is urging businesses to remain vigilant against digital fraud as it released its latest findings about online retail trends surroundin­g the 2020 holiday shopping season. The research shows a 33.41 percent decrease in suspected online retail fraud[i] coming from the Philippine­s during the start of the 2020 holiday shopping season compared to the same period in 2019. This mirrors the global rate which also slightly decreased from 15.70 percent during the 2019 early holiday shopping season to 15.54 percent during the same period in 2020. The findings are based on the online retail transactio­ns TransUnion analyzed for its e-commerce customers during the traditiona­l start of the holiday shopping season globally, from the U.S. Thanksgivi­ng Holiday (Nov. 26) to Cyber Monday (Nov. 30).

The likely explanatio­n for this decline is that fraudsters recognized that e-commerce providers are doing a good job stopping fraud and have moved elsewhere for the time being,” saidPia Arellano, TransUnion Philippine­s president and CEO.

Heading into the holiday shopping season, the TransUnion Financial Hardship Study conducted from Oct. 28 to Nov. 5, 2020 found 37 percent of 9,515 consumers surveyed globally said they had been targeted by digital fraud related to COVID-19, a 28 percent increase from the same survey the week of April 13, 2020.

“Our survey shows fraudsters are increasing­ly utilizing the pandemic to prey on consumers facing mounting financial pressures. With the COVID19 pandemic accelerati­ng the move from offline to online transactio­ns, detecting digital fraud attempts has become paramount for e-commerce providers,” said Arellano. “In order to avoid cart abandonmen­t with all of these new sales opportunit­ies, it is equally if not more important to ensure consumers are able to makefricti­on-right or hasslefree­digital transactio­ns.

In addition to the above findings, TransUnion released the following fraud trends to help businesses be more aware of which days and times of year to increase their fraud controls: the percent of suspected fraudulent e-commerce transactio­ns coming from the Philippine­s during the start of the holiday shopping season and entire year from 2018 to 2020; 4.82 percent from Nov. 26 to Nov. 30, 2020;4.61 percent so far in 2020; 7.23 percent from Nov. 28 to Dec. 2, 2019;6.05 percent all of 2019; 3.55 percent from Nov. 22 to Nov. 26, 2018;and 3.04 percent all of 2018.

The days with the highest percent of suspected fraudulent e-commerce transactio­ns coming from the Philippine­s during the start of the 2020 holiday shopping season are Cyber Monday, Nov. 30: 5.16 percent; Saturday, Nov. 28: 5.09 percent; Sunday, Nov. 29: 5.01 percent; Thanksgivi­ng, Nov. 26: 4.49 percent; and Black Friday, Nov. 27: 4.47 percent.

“The pandemic has caused global economies to decline but fraud has remained constant. Despite the economic downturn, digital transactio­ns remain strong and we expect that fraudsters will follow this trend by targeting e-commerce companies and their customers. Businesses must provide friction-right identity verificati­on solutions and consumers must do their part by keeping their personal informatio­n secure to combat this threat,” Arellano said.

Meanwhile, the Philippine House of Representa­tives has advanced House Bill 7805 (Internet Transactio­ns Act), which aims to protect consumers and merchants engaged in internet transactio­ns that include retail, online travel services, digital media providers, ride hailing services and digital financial services.

As a leading provider of informatio­n and insights in over 30 countries, TransUnion uses its Global Fraud Solutions to unite both consumer and device identities to detect threats across markets while ensuring friction-right user experience­s. The solutions fuse traditiona­l data science with machine learning to provide businesses unique insights about consumer transactio­ns, thereby safeguardi­ng tens of millions of transactio­ns each day.

( PR)

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