Using technology to prevent fraud

With its 3D Secure Monitoring solution, Tietoevry Banking is stopping fraud and contributing to safer online shopping for consumers – while also helping to prevent money from going to organized crime.

"Tietoevry Banking has monitored card transactions on behalf of our customers for a long time. We are continuously working to improve the way we are doing this," says André Moen Eide, Head of Tietoevry Banking's Financial Crime Prevention Defence Center.

Phishing on the rise

The latest solution Tietoevry Banking is offering its customers is called 3D Secure Monitoring, created in response to the big increase in attempts at phishing. This is a form of fraud where a person is contacted by criminals pretending to be someone they know. The person is then lured into providing sensitive data such as social-security numbers, or banking and credit card details and passwords.

"Forty percent of the fraud we detect on behalf of our customers is phishing, and this is increasing all the time. Our solutions need to keep up with this," explains Moen Eide.

Aborting transactions

It used to be that Tietoevry Banking’s system would not flag any payments carried out via a two-step verification process, which typically involves using your online-banking credentials to verify your payment.

"We could previously assume that all such transactions were legitimate. With the rise of phishing, however, this is no longer the case," explains Moen Eide.

This is where 3D Secure Monitoring comes in. The system not only checks whether a transaction was made using a two-step verification process, it also looks at factors such as the device being used, the IP address and the browser language. Using all this information, the system can abort transactions that look suspicious.

"Let’s say someone has got hold of all of your necessary banking information and is using this
to make a transaction with your credit card. If our system sees that this transaction is being made from an unusual location and with a device that has not been used before, it will abort the transaction before it goes through," explains Moen Eide.

Thirty-one million euros

The system – which is being by more than 40 banks in the Nordics and the UK – prevented fraud worth more than EUR 31 million in 2023.

"We see that this is working well and that the banks using the solution are really happy," says Moen Eide. "Part of the reason for this is that the system is pretty accurate. Over 70 percent of the transactions that were aborted turned out to be fraud attempts."

Stopping criminal money flows

The benefits of Tietoevry Banking’s 3D Secure Monitoring go beyond making online shopping safer. The system also contributes to cutting off the money flow to organized crime.

"We know that a lot of the fraud attempts we stop are being carried out by organized crime. So by aborting the transactions before they happen, we are stopping their cash flow," says Moen Eide.

Moving forward, the team is hoping that even more banks will adopt the 3D Secure Monitoring System.

"This is something we are all really proud of, so of course we would like to see it being used as widely as possible. It benefits banks, their customers and society at large," concludes Moen Eide.