• Aaron Holmes, Founder and CEO at Kani Payments


• 24.03.2022 11:15 am
#data #fraud

The ecommerce explosion is driving a surge in transaction data volumes - and this is only going to get bigger. The amount of data created soared from 1.2 trillion gigabytes to 59 trillion gigabytes just between 2010 and 2020, almost 5,000% growth.

Many companies have the mistaken view that the more data they have, the more useful it is. But from a security perspective, more data points mean more potential targets for fraudsters to attack. In 2021, an estimated $20 billion was lost to online ecommerce fraud, a rise of 18% from 2020.

Weak Data Security Can Threaten Business Survival

Weak data security causes huge and sometimes irreparable damage to customer trust. The time and cost involved in strengthening defences following fraud can place businesses under unbearable strain, in addition to the severe fines imposed by regulators for data breaches and non-compliance.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) are the main data security and storage regulations that fintechs need to be mindful of, in addition to the fraud-related rules laid down by payment schemes. Sensitive transaction and customer data needs to be protected, but at the same time, it needs to be safely accessible and accurate to generate business insights and future growth. But balancing data security, integrity, and availability is not easy. 

Filling the Gaps in Data Storage and Security

Fintechs can strengthen data security, plug gaps where fraudsters are trying to enter, and ensure regulatory compliance by minimising the amount of transactional payments data they hold. 

By knowing where their data lives, firms can identify what information needs safeguarding, and what needs purging when required. This is especially relevant when mergers and acquisitions bring different company systems together, leading to data being duplicated, and other datasets made redundant - or worse, left unprotected altogether. 

Put simply, if data doesn’t exist in your systems, it can’t be exposed or compromised. Filtering out the old and unnecessary will significantly reduce the risk of fraud, and help to improve audit trails.

Optimised Reporting and Reconciliation 

With data volumes rising so quickly, it’s just not possible to manually review all data items and identify reconciliation breaks, or potential fraud-related anomalies. 

By automating reporting and reconciliation, businesses can ingest data from many sources, and aggregate and itemise transaction data when required. This reduces manual errors, and enables fintechs to hunt down potential fraud incidents much more rapidly than before, without the need for manual investigation.

Kani Payments’ core data reporting and reconciliation platform is PCI-DSS compliant, and all the data that goes into it is tokenised, so sensitive information is not stored. 2022 will see us introduce transaction monitoring and risk scoring transactions to our models to give our clients even more powerful fintech reporting and fraud detection capabilities.

Dynamic Data Reporting and Reconciliation Can Elevate Fintechs to the Next Level

Data security and fraud protection are business-critical functions that need continuous monitoring to ensure they can deal with evolving threats. 

By aligning fraud prevention with enhanced data reporting and reconciliation synergies, businesses will gain the ability to future-proof themselves against emerging fraud threats. Next-generation data reporting and reconciliation technology, combined with first-class support, empowers fintechs to reach new heights of success.