FICO Falcon Fraud Manager will also enable EnterCard to communicate with customers through their mobile phones, thus improving the customer experience while lowering the cost of customer communications.

EnterCard chose the industry-leading FICO Falcon Fraud Manager solution, which protects more than 2.5 billion payment cards worldwide for its advanced analytics capabilities. Falcon's ability to seamlessly integrate with a mobile communications service was a deciding factor. EnterCard said that the new system in combination with its staff's expertise is expected to decrease fraud losses and risk exposures by around 40%.

In one case that occurred shortly after FICO Falcon Fraud Manager went live, it detected suspicious activity on a customer's card. The EnterCard fraud agent contacted the customer, who was on vacation in Mexico and didn't yet realize his card had been stolen — along with his wallet. EnterCard had already blocked the card, rejecting a withdrawal of around US$7,000.

"Falcon, provided by FICO, will help 'make our customers' everyday lives easier' by improving security and protecting them against fraud," said Freddy Syversen, Chief Executive Officer for EnterCard Group. "This is a milestone for us, our partners and our customers. We have ambitious goals for the Nordic card market, and Falcon will help complement our goal of achieving superior analytical capabilities. FICO's solutions are also an important part of our next-generation architecture for risk management."

"The Nordic market is pushing fresh ideas into the card industry to drive growth," said Mike Gordon, senior vice president of sales, services and marketing at FICO. "EnterCard belongs to a new breed of innovators who see that analytics can help them improve risk management while at the same time upgrading the customer experience."

EnterCard is a joint venture between Swedbank and Barclays and among the leading credit card businesses in the Nordic market, with 400 employees and 2 million customers.