Payments Authentication Is A Varied And Confusing World

In some ways, payments authentication can come across as improvisational — every institution seems to use a different method.

Call centers, particularly those dealing with financial transactions, have a strong need to be sure that the person on the other end of the line is actually their customer. The fact that most firms know that, and set up measures to properly authenticate those customers, is a good thing, said Chief Commercial Officer Dewald Nolte of Entersekt in a recent conversation with Karen Webster.

“Fraudsters can take advantage of the fact that authentication is all over the map,” Nolte said, “especially if they manage to intercept legitimate calls. Customers don’t know when to ask ‘when do I not trust this anymore?’ – because every time they do an authentication, there are different requirements, and answering a lot of personal questions doesn’t strike consumers as odd.”

The interview happened as thoughts about authentication are shifting.

One of the most common and accepted ways to validate a customer’s identity is simply to ask them questions that presumably only they could answer. Old addresses, schools, pet names, cars — all data points consumers are comfortable coughing up in case of an identity check during digital interaction.

But that presents an opportunity for criminals. That’s because around 1.4 billion consumer records are exposed on the black market — and that’s just a tally from the past year. And they’re more than exposed: The records are for sale. And because demand for consumer data is high on the black market, the trend of large institutions being hacked and looted for their consumer data cache is not on the decline.

Philipp Pointner, chief product officer at Jumio, takes a holistic approach to identity that looks at an entire consumer lifestyle instead of tying authentication to single moments and data points. in In a recent edition of Data Drivers, Pointner explains how that works — and why it’s the future of FIs being sure of who is at the other end of their transactions.