Every organization faces risks. Especially when it comes to Payment Solution Providers, efficient and effective Risk Management enables seamless growth and maximizes organizational success.
Since the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic, E-commerce companies have been handling both an unprecedented volume of online purchases and an unprecedented volume of fraudulent attacks. Because of this, it is more relevant than ever to choose a PSP that protects your business and boosts your growth, while providing a frictionless and safe customer experience.
In this article we talk about how PayRetailers has adopted a proactive approach to fight digital payment fraud. First we focus on the importance of a company’s risk perspective and strategy to confidently achieve its objectives under uncertainty. Second we receive help from Carla Rebelo, Fraud Prevention & Claims Manager at PayRetailers, answering questions and sharing how PayRetailers is building an industry-leading fraud prevention system.
Importance of “Risk and Compliance” within a company
Governance, Risk Management and Compliance (GRC) is commonly defined as a framework that enables organizations to confidently achieve financial and non-financial objectives, tackle uncertainty and act with integrity.
It directly creates value by improving decision-making, optimizing IT investments, eliminating silos, meeting compliance requirements, to name a few.
Governance is the leadership of a company with defined guidelines, like company objectives and methods for resource planning to achieve those objectives.
Risk Management is all about identifying, evaluating, treating, monitoring and communicating risks that are inherent to a company’s activity, in a way that enables planning and executing of risk-mitigating strategies, while supporting the organization’s business goals.
Compliance provides the guarding rails for proper execution of organizational activities, making sure that operations are done in a way that meets the laws and regulations impacting them. Meeting compliance involves controlling and auditing company processes to make sure they are aligned with the applicable law.
GRC should be implemented by Payment Solution Providers that want to achieve business goals while managing risk effectively and staying on top of compliance.
PayRetailers has established a robust Governance, Risk and Compliance framework that allows Merchants to devote their energy to what matters the most – growing their business.
Interview
How long have you been working at PayRetailers?
Since January 2020, a little over a year ago.
What position do you hold in the company, and what are your daily responsibilities?
I am the manager of the Fraud & Claims team, a department that falls within Operations but interacts with almost all other areas of the company. I am in charge of designing and implementing systems and processes to proactively tackle risk and minimize losses associated with payment fraud across PayRetailers’ network. Additionally, I supervise and optimize the resolution of chargebacks and other commercial disputes that might arise between merchants and their customers, with the goal of mitigating the reputational risk and credit risk inherent to the payment intermediation work.
How many people make up your team and how many people are you in charge of?
Our team is made up of three people with diverse backgrounds, working from 2 different time zones.
What is the vision you have for PayRetailers in the coming years and specify the vision of your department (growth & development)?
We can all agree that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the trend towards digitalization of the payment industry has reached unprecedented heights. Digital wallets and card-not-present (CNP) transactions and alternative payment methods are rapidly replacing cash, checks and physical credit cards. However, this shift to digital payment channels came hand in hand with a rise in payments fraud risk, as fraudsters manage to thrive in the face of economic downturn (through social engineering attacks, phishing scams, malicious websites, account take-overs, government-issued stimulus cheques theft, etc.).
I am convinced that what distinguishes us at PayRetailers is our ability to adapt to changes and our commitment to offering a service based on trust. These two characteristics will allow us to solidify our position in the payment industry and offer a powerful foundation to empower our clients to achieve the commercial success they seek.
Under this context of rapid growth and change, the work we are doing is more relevant than ever. We have already adopted a proactive approach, leveraging transactional data and machine learning algorithms to identify both known and unknown fraud patterns regardless of the payment method. In the coming years, we want to consolidate a reliable and adaptative fraud risk management framework that enables legitimate transactions to proceed without friction.
As new digital payment options keep flourishing, we can only speculate on what kind of fraud will emerge. Even so, an experienced, motivated and competent team supported by robust management processes and Data Intelligence will allow PayRetailers to keep protecting consumers and Merchants, regardless of the payment method.
Tell us briefly about your department’s role at PayRetailers, its function, purpose, and where it fits within the entire organization.
The work we do is an essential component of PayRetailers’ value proposition.
Our role is to anticipate problems or risks that may arise in the normal course of PayRetailers’ operations. We evaluate the potential financial and non-financial impacts arising from payment fraud risk, to determine whether such risk and its effects are within the limits that our organization is willing to accept.
On the one hand, we are a liaison between Operations and Finance. On the other, we collaborate with the Business and Product Development teams to design and deliver a secure payment platform, taking into account the specific needs of our merchants – fraud detection and prevention are critical, but they must occur without impacting the customer experience.
In general, how would you describe your experience at PayRetailers since joining the company, what you like most, what do you think of the PayRetailers culture, what would you like to tell the world about us?
I sensed cultural fit with PayRetailers since my first job interview. We are passionate about our mission and collaboration is an integral part of our daily operations. Besides, people enjoy coming to work and everyone is always ready to roll up our sleeves and find solutions.
All in all, we pride ourselves of challenging the status quo of financial technology in Latin America. Doing so definitely comes with great excitement and responsibility.
If your company wants to be part of our growth in Latin America, you should contact us. We can help you expand your business to that region and reap the benefits of a more global exposure. Talk to you soon!
