American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) will use Expedia Group’s Fraud Prevention as a Service (FPaaS) solution for travel bookings on its Amex GBT Egencia solution.

The FPaaS tool blocks fraudulent transactions before they happen, reducing unscrupulous activity and enabling more protection for their clients, says Expedia Group. Expedia Group sold Egencia to Amex GBT in 2021.

Key features included in FPaaS are ‘Booking Screening’, where Expedia Group reviews e-commerce transactions in real time with AI/ML fraud detection models to stop fraudulent transactions at the source. Another feature is ‘Account Takeover Protection’: Expedia Group monitors and reviews customer logins in real time using AI/ML models to secure the safety and integrity of customer accounts when potentially fraudulent activity is detected via suggested remedial actions.

There’s also a ’Chargeback Management’ feature, where Expedia Group’s in-house specialist fraud operations team takes end-to-end ownership of the dispute management and resolution process, dealing with all interactions with banks and merchants, all backed by a 100% chargeback guarantee, which reimburses partners for any true fraudulent transactions (ie. when the transaction was deemed acceptable during initial screening. It does not cover transactions that were either screened by FPaaS and not approved, and chargebacks for friendly fraud or service issues).

According to Experian’s 2022 Global Identity and Fraud Report, 70% of businesses say their concern about fraud increased compared to the year before, and 58% of consumers have been a victim of online fraud, know someone who has been a victim, or both.

The impacts are felt by the travel industry too. In total, fraud costs the travel industry over US$21 billion annually, including $6 billion in damages and $15 billion in overheads, according to other research.

In addition to direct and operational overheads incurred by dealing with fraudulent transactions, shady dealings can also result in the loss of personal data and create financial losses through unauthorized logins to customer accounts.

Source: Travelweek