ARC’s fourth annual Fraud Awareness Month featured five webinars led by ARC’s Director of Revenue Integrity, Cornelius Hattingh, and ARC’s Director of Fraud Investigations, Doug Nass. Along with expert guests, they discussed insights related to fraud in the air travel industry and tools to help businesses combat fraud risk. Attendees learned about the resurgence of fraud since COVID-19 and the latest trends currently impacting the travel landscape. Read below for a recap of each webinar and link to the video presentation.
Be sure to also check out the full list of ARC’s on-demand webinars, including content beyond Fraud Awareness Month.
Fraud and Risk Insights 2021
ARC Fraud Awareness Month kicked off with an overview of the types of fraud seen in 2021 so far, including unauthorized ticketing, phishing emails, and malware and ransomware attacks.
ARC’s Hattingh and Nass detailed the steep decline in travel fraud incidents during the onset of COVID-19 and how incidents have increased since travelers have gotten vaccinated and returned to the skies. They provided an overview of who’s behind fraud and ransomware attacks, along with an update on where these fraudsters are typically located and what to look out for in your emails.
Watch below to hear about these topics and learn how to keep your business safe.
An Analytical View on 100 Billion Transactions by Worldpay/FIS
The next webinar in the fraud series featured Tony Ashe of Worldpay, a leader in technology and services for merchants, banks and capital markets across the globe.
He focused on the e-commerce market in North America, providing insights into consumer purchasing trends given the 35% increase in e-commerce transactions in 2020 and digital/mobile wallets becoming the most used form of payment for retailers.
He also talked about the fraud trends Worldpay/FIS saw over the past year, including a 30% increase in chargebacks experienced by airlines. He then spoke on growing trends in global airline transactions, like the rise in ‘buy now, pay later’ options, contactless and frictionless payments, and alternative forms of payments.
Watch Tony’s presentation to learn these insights and more.
Actuary: Credit Risk Monitoring for a Sustainable Payment Ecosystem
In this webinar, Hattingh and Nass are joined by Paul van Alfen, co-founder and strategic advisor at Actuary, and Elyana Sanders, vice president of product development at Mastercard. They discuss the changing relationship between acquiring banks and airlines/OTAs, including the challenges of assessing credit risk due to the pandemic and what solutions there are in the industry to help with travel recovery.
They showcased Actuary, a new tool that helps airlines and OTAs gain complete credit risk exposure insights, facilitating airlines to discuss settlement terms and volume caps with their acquiring banks.
An Old Fraud Returns: Protect your Agency from Phishing
In this, Hattingh and Nass discussed the dangers and impacts of unauthorized ticketing and phishing on travel agencies. They talked about how these two types of fraud have shifted with the travel environment.
They showcased sample phishing email attempts that have been received by travel agencies and what red flags to look for. They also listed common destinations for unauthorized ticketing schemes and the changing behaviors of fraudsters that make their attempts seem more legitimate.
The webinar closed with tools to use and steps to take if you think your agency or business has been compromised, including when to reach out to your IT team and alert your GDS.
What is ‘Know Your Customer’ (KYC) and Why is it Important?
In the final webinar of the month, Hattingh and Nass are joined by Sohum Karia, senior counsel and assistant corporate secretary at ARC, to talk about the steps ARC takes when evaluating new customers and partners. They share the principles of “Know Your Customer” (KYC) that aim to help agencies avoid suspicious businesses and the legal and regulatory risks accompanying them.
Throughout the webinar, Karia emphasizes the three principles of “Know Your Customer,” which are customer identification, due diligence and monitoring. The best practices for each involve verification of identification documents, satisfying legal and regulatory requirements, and continually monitoring a business partner’s behavior, preferences and changes in activity.
Their last bit of advice to agencies is to forward all suspected fraud emails to ARC’s fraud department. It helps ARC’s team identify and notify agency partners of new types of fraud and bad actors.
Thank you to all the attendees and speakers who participated in the fourth annual ARC Fraud Awareness Month. As air travel continues to recover, ARC reminds everyone to stay vigilant!