Our client, one of the leading consumer bank, boasts services across diverse sectors, including corporate banking, retail assets, and financial inclusion. They have rapidly expanded their credit card offerings and collaborated with other entities for product versatility. A primary goal was enhancing the customer experience by effectively monitoring and preventing fraudulent transactions, especially on compromised cards.
Overview
Approach
Merchant Level Analysis:
To curb rising fraud in top merchant transactions, the Merchant Level Analysis was instituted. Every fortnight, a merchant dispute file is examined, highlighting the top 10 merchants with elevated dispute rates. Further:
- Analysis of Merchant IDs (MIDs) and Terminal IDs (TIDs) associated with these merchants helps in detecting high fraud concentrations. MIDs identify the merchant bank account during a transaction, while TIDs are location-specific identifiers tied to MIDs.
- For example, for merchant “ABC,” transactions between 2-6 a.m., exceeding 25,000 INR, might be restricted due to high fraud rates.
Preventing Compromised Card Frauds: Compromised cards, where card details might be leaked, are potential fraud targets. The strategy:
- Begins with data cleaning.
- Weekly, around 20 compromised card details, like city, state, and expiry dates, are received. Matches are then sought within existing data.
- Using the ‘BIN’ (first six digits of a card) as a primary identifier, cards with one mismatch (like the cardholder’s name) but matching other details are flagged. For such cards, if there are fewer than four matches, action, such as blocking, is recommended.
Output
The initiatives have been pivotal in fraud prevention:
- Through the Merchant Level Analysis, suspicious transactions on two primary merchants, contributing to a high fraud rate, were successfully halted. This led to a 50% reduction in disputes compared to September’s figures.
- Notably, by blocking certain Merchant IDs, the bank saved 7 Million in a month from a prominent payment merchant. Though these transactions constituted only ~1.5% of the total, they contributed to a staggering ~98% of disputes, indicating their high-risk nature without impacting regular business operations.
