Whether a credit union issues debit cards, credit cards or both, it has become absolutely essential to have some sort of product in place that monitors card activity to identify spending patterns that may not have been initiated by your members. CO-OP Financial Services employs Falcon Fraud Manager to identify suspicious signature and PIN activity for our card-issuing clients. Suspicious activity is presented in the form of a case to our Card Member Security team. The call center staff reaches out to members and reviews the case activity to validate whether questionable transactions are legitimate or fraudulent.
Contacting members is essential to identifying and minimizing fraud losses. An even more critical component is the ability to deny highly suspicious transactions in real time before a fraudster can complete a purchase or ATM withdrawal, thus preventing some losses entirely. Real-time Falcon accomplishes just that.
In recent months, CO-OP Financial Services has seen more credit unions jump on the real time band wagon with great success. In January 2011, 1,296 transactions were successfully denied by Real-time Falcon, saving credit unions $459,700. By May 2011, denials in real time increased to 2,504, saving Real-time Falcon participants over $950,000.
While many debit card issuers initially saw limited value in adding Real-time Falcon for monitoring PIN activity and chose only to use real time decisioning for signature-based transactions, ever-changing fraud trends has resulted in many credit unions reconsidering this position. With the recent data compromise of card numbers and PINs from a national chain of arts and crafts stores, several credit unions that use Real-time Falcon for reviewing both PIN and signature-based activity have saved thousands of dollars by preventing fraudulent ATM withdrawals.
Based on the continued success of Real-time Falcon, CO-OP Financial Services is reaching out to several credit unions currently monitoring both PIN and Signature activity in Falcon to migrate from Online to Real-time. If your credit union uses Falcon to monitor Signature or PIN activity for case management only, the moment is now to re-address this issue as fraud continues to grow in both the PIN and Signature transaction environments.
CO-OP Financial Services has seen success with Real-time Falcon from the very large to the smallest of credit unions. As fraudsters get more sophisticated in committing fraud, we also have to evolve with the times to identify and prevent fraud more effectively. If your credit union is not taking advantage of real time decisioning today, I urge you to reconsider adding Real-time Falcon to your credit unions arsenal of fraud tools.
Editor’s Note: You can learn more about Real-time Falcon at a series of webinars sponsored by CO-OP Financial Services on Tues., July 12 at 10 a.m. Pacific time; Thurs., July 14 at 1 p.m. Pacific time; and Thurs., July 21 at 8 a.m. Pacific time. More details will be available soon here.
Real time Falcon was one of the best investments we have ever made. Since implementing this service back in February of 2010 it has prevented ten of thousands of dollars in fraud losses for our members. From the time we implemented the product we saw immediate results.
You will also find that the Real Time Falcon group is easy to work with and can make quick changes to your RealTtime Falcon rules depending on the type of fraud is currently happening in your area.
First Financial Credit Union – NM