Business identity theft is a rising threat among B2B credit operations.
At the same time, these scams are proving increasingly difficult and time-consuming to detect, posing a significant challenge for operational efficiency.
Bectran Inc., the credit, collections and accounts receivable platform leading the way in fraud prevention, offers a powerful solution in its partnership with Ekata by Mastercard, a tool delivering low-friction risk insights to combat fraud. Together, Bectran and Ekata empower credit departments against identity scams while streamlining risk assessments.
Identity Fraud in Trade Credit
While typically associated with consumer transactions, identity fraud has been on the rise among B2B businesses and within trade credit specifically. Despite efforts to curtail fraud, scammers’ methods continue to evolve, becoming more and more difficult for departments to detect.
Take, for instance, a fraud scheme in which a scammer from outside of the US uses stolen personal identification along with a US-based shell company. Credit managers would need to dig deep into the provided credentials to even begin suspecting foul play.
Such fraud only needs to be difficult, not impossible, to detect. Within a department handling hundreds, thousands or millions of transactions a day, investigating every transaction to the necessary depth is infeasible even for the largest credit operations.
That is why, in the end, many identity scams like this one make it through organizations’ defenses. Usual prevention methods cost too much operational effort, and fraudsters more often than not evade all attempts to reclaim losses.
Automatic Fraud Prevention
Bectran has partnered with Ekata by Mastercard for a solution with both unsurpassed identity authentication and a low-friction, seamless experience for departments and their customers alike.
The partnership specifically targets B2B identity verification in a digital landscape. Using information already captured in the credit application process within Bectran, Ekata can assess applicant identity and business validity, giving users a set of actionable risk ratings as a result — all in under 100 milliseconds.
Bectran, leveraging its integration with Ekata, can automatically flag suspicious transactions for review, at the same time providing credit managers with Ekata’s full risk findings, including whether:
- The applicant and business name, address and phone numbers match;
- The email domain, business address and phone number are valid;
- The distance between the applicant IP address location and the business location are suspicious.
The combination of Bectran’s automated approvals with Ekata’s verifications provides a still more efficient fraud prevention setup for credit teams. Results from Ekata are factored into Bectran’s risk scorecards, so that organizations can include fraud detection factors into their automatic risk assessments.
Creditors can spare time and focus from looking out for scams, with Bectran and Ekata running the deep checks and accurately flagging suspicious activity. With the additional efficiency, departments can put more emphasis on strategic risk management among their portfolios.
“Ekata provides exceptional intelligence and data for verifying identities, locations, businesses and blacklists” comments Ali Kidwai, Sr. Manager of Product & Implementation at Bectran. “Partnered with Bectran’s capabilities for automating credit review and approval, those verifications give departments an incomparable dynamic edge for keeping bad actors out seamlessly.”