Join the Community

22,135
Expert opinions
44,173
Total members
427
New members (last 30 days)
194
New opinions (last 30 days)
28,715
Total comments

First Class flights and Margaritas on the beach

You spend all year long working, and in summer time you deserve some R&R.

Option 1: look after holiday packages. Fly charter, book a reasonably priced hotel, and rent a compact car to do some sightseeing.

Option 2: search for the most expensive destination you can find. Fly first class, book an all-inclusive five star resort with morning massages, rent a convertible and go sip margaritas on the beach.

Easy choice, if you’re a fraudster.

According to RSA eCommerce Transaction Monitoring data, the average card spend in low-cost travel deal websites (think about all those last-minute deals) is $380. But the average fraudulent spend is roughly $1600.

$1600 on last-minute holiday deals on average. When it’s someone else’s money, you can afford spoiling yourself ;)

No wonder all the fraudsters are now on holiday.

You could argue that this makes spotting the frauds pretty straightforward: just go after any crazy high-priced deal someone is buying. But the thing is, if you decline everyone who wants a high-priced last-minute deal, you lose a huge amount of good business. Very good business, actually. So catching the fraud while letting the good transactions through isn’t that simple.

Lets look at car insurance as another example. RSA data shows the average card spend on car insurance payments is $336, and the average fraud spend is $919.

I can only hope the reason behind this huge gap is the fact fraudsters drive very expensive cars. Otherwise, how can you explain it? I mean, how wild can you go about buying car insurance, even when you’re a fraudster?

“Hello, this is ABC auto insurance, how can I assist you?”

“Er… I want to buy insurance for my car. I want something REALLY fancy. What’s the most expensive policy you have?”

“Excuse me”?

“Expensive. Hit me with all you got”.

External

This content is provided by an external author without editing by Finextra. It expresses the views and opinions of the author.

Join the Community

22,135
Expert opinions
44,173
Total members
427
New members (last 30 days)
194
New opinions (last 30 days)
28,715
Total comments

Now Hiring