Barclaycard bolsters fraud defense with Kount’s help

Barclaycard Payments is looking to bolster its fraud-protection options with a defensive addition from German software provider Kount. Barclaycard currently processes roughly 40% of financial transactions within the U.K., amounting to roughly 32 billion transactions every year. Unsurprisingly, Kount’s software will seek to lighten the load when it comes to fraud detection by introducing an algorithm that will scan every transaction in real-time.

Complying with regulations while retaining ease of use

Like many payments processors, Barclaycard relies heavily on Transaction Risk Assessment (TRA) exemptions to power its daily transactions. These involve ostensibly secure transactions that forgo the often time-consuming process of two-factor authentication. But convenience comes at a price, and exemptions such as these have come under scrutiny from regulators for potentially representing a security breach.

Kount’s algorithm will look to preserve the convenience of authentication-exempt transactions by assessing every payment as it is being made. The software will then evaluate the transaction’s risk on a scale from low to high and, depending on other factors, may either call for two-factor authentication or block the transaction altogether if it was deemed a high-risk one. Given Barclaycard’s reach across more than 75 industries, the software will most likely come as a full suite with different criteria depending on the type of client. In a brief statement, Barclaycard’s director of product David Jeffrey praised the award-winning fraud-detection software and added that the software will both assist with existing issues and provide smoother regulatory compliance moving forward.