Retailers Still Unprepared for Omnichannel Fraud Risk

Retailers have worked hard to offer an omnichannel shopping experience to their customers over the last few years. However, it may not only provide more convenience for customers, but for fraudsters as well.

For the retailers who have adopted an omnichannel strategy, more than half believe that they don’t have adequate tools and measures in place to protect their businesses against fraud in the omnichannel environment.

Are you doing enough to combat omnichannel fraud?

It is estimated that in 2017 the financial loss due to theft, fraud and inventory shrinkage added up to nearly $47bn.

In addition to the traditional types of fraud that affect retailers, omnichannel commerce creates new opportunities for fraudsters in the shape of card-not-present (CNP) fraud, cross-border or cross-channel fraud, click-and-collect fraud, card-testing fraud, returns fraud, chargebacks, and mobile payment fraud.

Going omnichannel can give retailers an edge over their competitors, boost sales, reduce waste, and promote smarter growth.  And consumers want it, so this trend is here to stay.

Nevertheless, new purchasing behaviors, new payment types and a diversity of fulfilment options across channels create greater complexity for retailers, which increases the opportunities for fraudsters and so increases a retailer’s exposure to risk.

Retailers are still largely unprepared to protect themselves from omnichannel fraud. According to one study by Forrester Research, 65% of retailers believe that they do not have adequate fraud management tools to support effective fraud management.

Less than half reported having consolidated fraud management solutions across channels  and 54% say the don’t have the skilled staff needed to deal with omnichannel fraud challenges.

A unified approach to reduce fraud and risk 

While true omnichannel authentication is still new, customers will come to expect it and retailers are recognizing its importance.

But retailers can do a lot to minimize the rise from omnichannel fraud by adopting a unified approach based on ensuring they have fast, effective data integration along with real-time and post-transaction fraud screening across channels, 24/7. 

In this respect, hosting your IT systems on a cloud platform like Openbravo Cloud  offers many advantages because the data is stored on a highly secure cloud server and security can be centrally managed on a continuous basis. Discrepancies can be tracked across channels more easily and the data can be used to tailor a fraud prevention strategy.

Integrated retail POS systems like Openbravo POS further prevent fraud for vulnerable point-of-sale activities like returns or cash movements with security, audit, and control capabilities.

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