Payment fraud is affecting more and more businesses as they increase their e-commerce and online presence. So, let’s talk about current trends in payment fraud, and some tips for keeping your payments safe.

Payment Fraud by the Numbers

Payment fraud can occur in lots of ways, including identity theft, CNP (card-not-present) fraud, malware, credit card fraud, and more.

One of the most frequent payment fraud is credit card fraud, which saw a 44.6% increase in instances among certain age groups last year. All in all, $149 million was lost to credit card fraud alone in 2020. But as fraudsters get more creative, so will we. Let’s talk about some great ways to reduce the risk of payment fraud for your business.

Check Your Payment Data Often

Real-time payments are the most helpful for businesses and customers alike. And it’s important that you keep an eye on things as they are coming in. The first best practice we’d like to share regarding reducing payment fraud is to establish a routine that includes unlimited access to your payment data. ReliaFund’s platform dashboard allows you to see real-time status updates on all your transactions.

Having your payment data in a centralized and secure digital location can also help you catch any errors that come through and allow you to stay on top of all types of payments, from checks to web and phone payments.

Real-time data monitoring also protects your bottom line because it decreases instances of false declines. False declines, for several reasons from inconvenience to embarrassment, can cause you to lose a sale or a customer as you are finalizing the transaction, and no one wants that.

Automate Payments When Possible

Automating payments for your customers is not just an added convenience for you and for them. It also creates a consistent expectation including what your business’s payments will look like and when they will occur. It reduces human error and allows you and your customers to spot anomalies and outliers much more quickly.

When you automate, your customer doesn’t have to question whether a certain transaction is a recurring bill or if it’s an extra charge you’re trying to add on. This also helps with transparency and facilitates customer trust and loyalty.

Simplify Your Payment Records and Platforms

Multi-platform payment processing is not ideal. It opens your business up to more fraud opportunities. Multiple processing platforms not only have different parameters, accessibility requirements, and security measures, but also make spotting instances of fraud harder.

Protect Your Payments with a Trusted Processing System

Just like many other business processes, there are great and trusted payment processing services that can help you protect all types of transactions. ReliaFund’s Electronic Payment Services platform simplifies your payments, regardless of your business’s size or payment volume.

Ours is an end-to-end platform that streamlines payments across online and mobile. User-friendly, all-inclusive – and we use a team of security experts paired with tokenization and other industry best practices to ensure the safety of your customer data.

ReliaFund can easily integrate with any application, including the cloud. Set up automated billing and payments, and upgrade from check mailing and multi-platform confusion.

Contact us to learn more.