Published on 24/07/2023

FLOA’s approach to preventing bank card fraud

Since the arrival of e-commerce, online bank card fraud has been on the rise. At FLOA, we do everything in our power to prevent this type of fraud as far as possible.

This work is primarily carried out by the teams of Jean-Baptiste Boix, manager of the fraud division. It is a point of honour for both him and his team to protect you from external threats and to help customers who, unfortunately, are targeted by fraudsters.

Bank card fraud: the importance of predicting and monitoring fraudulent activity

In 2020 in France, the money lost through bank fraud amounted to €525 million. At FLOA, we aim to limit the risk of external threats in order to protect our customers at all costs. To achieve this, we rely on predicting and monitoring fraudulent activity.

In practice, this involves using digital tools to better analyse user attitudes.

We use the Pindrop editor to help combat telephone fraud. This data security software precisely identifies incoming calls in order to detect possible incidents of voice fraud. While it is clear that fraudsters are rife on the Web, more and more are now turning to telephone scams. In France, 21% of the scams perpetrated involved victims receiving an offer via phone¹.
Dataiku is used to generate predictive models in order to identify atypical buying behaviour. More broadly, this tool is also used to produce credit scores or to segment customer groups.
Neo4J is a graph database that helps to detect fraud by querying or linking data.

All the information from these studies and analyses is fed into our prediction system. In this way, we can take action prior to incidents to stop the threat before anything happens.

“Our job is to help the bank protect itself against external threats, but also to help customers. Thanks to digitalisation, we’ve been able to improve our predictive ability, detecting the smallest warning signs from customers. We identify the behaviours and journeys that are unusual for honest customers and the behaviours typical of fraudsters. This enhances our prediction system.”

Jean-Baptiste Boix, Manager of the Fraud Division.

Combining AI² with people power to combat bank card fraud

At FLOA, we have also opted to use Machine Learning³ and AI² to identify suspicious behaviour and reduce the rate of fraud. The results are indisputable: while attempts to commit fraud have increased 30% year on year⁴, our actions have reduced them by over 50%⁴. Adopting this methodology has helped us to better identify and prevent fraudulent behaviour.

At FLOA, we believe the key to fraud detection is a pioneering attitude and, above all, the ability to constantly adapt. And with good reason! Fraudsters are constantly finding ways to circumvent the protective barriers put in place by institutions. Such barriers can quickly be rendered obsolete, which is why constantly strengthening your internal security is so important. We have therefore chosen to work with the most innovative companies around in order to achieve this goal (Content Square, ThreatMetrix, Linkurious, etc.). At the same time, we are also recruiting new talent who, with their extensive knowledge and skills, have the ability to create a secure ecosystem that prevents bank card fraud as much as possible.

“Fraud has become professionalised and industrialised. Our fraud prevention team is growing year on year: we now have 11 people across the Operational Division and the Analysis Division. Technology has enabled us to automate certain processes in order to maximise human added value on strategic tasks and more sophisticated analysis.”

Jean-Baptiste Boix, Manager of the Fraud Division.

Keeping a cool head amid bank card fraud: the FLOA way

In total, 1.4 million French cards were involved in at least one attempt to commit fraud in 2020, up 2.26% from 2019⁵. Hackers have been developing increasingly ingenious and inventive systems to steal money through this payment method:

spoofing: the fraudster poses as someone at the bank to extract the victim's bank login details;
skimming: the scammer steals customer’s bank card data when they are making a withdrawal from an ATM;
Account Takeover (ATO) Fraud: the criminal accesses the victim's bank account and takes control of it, etc.

In addition, more and more criminals have been joining forces to carry out large-scale fraud operations and extort increasingly large amounts of money. In such cases, we are not dealing with one scammer, but dozens and the sums involved can be considerable.

However, whatever situation they are faced with, our teams always keep their cool. The best way of combatting bank card fraud is to be meticulous and organised when looking for appropriate solutions to combat these attacks.

“Bank fraud is increasingly carried out by organised networks capable of large-scale operations. At FLOA, composure is the name of the game, whatever the sums at stake or the situations encountered... We strive to keep a cool head, to stay calm and methodical. We are able to carry out appropriate measures in line with the level of risk, in order to strike the right balance between increased security and streamlined customer journeys.”

Jean-Baptiste Boix, Manager of the Fraud Division.

Taking responsibility for fraud without impacting merchants

Despite our professional approach, the cutting-edge tools used and our methodology, there is no such thing as zero risk when it comes to bank card fraud. Even through there have been impressive performances in this field, the market for fraud is constantly growing. Consequently, in the event of a loss, we take full responsibility.

Our role is to support our merchant partners and to ensure they can carry out their work in total security. Any potential damages are covered by FLOA. We then use each instance of fraud as an additional case study to further strengthen our processes and limit attacks.

“The fraud market is seeing growth of 20 to 40% per year - it’s exponential and not about to stop any time soon. At FLOA, we have been observing a decrease in fraud of around 30% per year for a number of years. And where, despite this excellent performance, there are losses, we cover them. It’s our role, as a partner to our merchant customers, to protect their businesses.”

Jean-Baptiste Boix, Manager of the Fraud Division.

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