Elevating Our Brand: DGITAL's Next Chapter
DGITAL x SWICONProblem
Online airline booking systems are a prime target for fraudsters, making anti-fraud providers absolutely critical for the industry. With high-value transactions, cross-border payments, and the instant, digital issuance of tickets, airlines face unique vulnerabilities that lead to significant financial losses.
Fraudsters employ various sophisticated tactics, including using stolen credit card information to purchase tickets for resale, creating fake bookings to manipulate flight capacity and prices, and exploiting loyalty programs through account takeovers or fake mileage claims. These activities not only result in direct revenue loss for airlines but also lead to costly chargebacks, operational disruptions, and damage to their reputation and customer trust.
Anti-fraud providers offer advanced solutions that leverage technologies like machine learning, behavioral analytics, and real-time data processing to detect and prevent fraudulent activities. They help airlines verify passenger identities, block suspicious transactions, identify bot activity, and protect sensitive customer data. By partnering with these providers, airlines can secure their booking systems, minimize financial risks, and ensure a seamless and safe experience for legitimate travelers, ultimately safeguarding their profitability and brand integrity.
Challenges
While payment service providers often include anti-fraud solutions, their covered features may vary between them. Airline booking systems often have multiple service providers integrated. It is beneficial to use specialized fraud prevention platforms for stronger and unified protection across all providers. Such solutions could be also more effective to detect large-scale fraud scenarios.
For larger airlines it is advisable to integrate multiple solutions, so the best solution can be chosen for the given transaction. Moreover, the airline could test multiple solutions and chose between them later.
It is desired for anti-fraud systems, to provide instant feedback about the transactions. Thus, a booking can be denied or approved during the payment process. Although many fraud check solutions could flag transactions for manual review. In such cases the booking system must handle when a transaction is flagged as fraudulent after its creation. For example, the airline may want to review or cancel such bookings.
Implementation
At DGITAL we developed a solution for our partner that can be integrated with multiple anti-fraud services which are hidden behind a generalized interface. The transaction details are sent to our service, then it is routed to the desired anti-fraud provider. When the provider can decide if the transaction if fraudulent or not, the result is directed back to the booking site, and the payment can be refused.
If the given payment needs a manual approval, then it can be flagged and the airline could handle the status change later. Depending on the provider this could be handled in several ways:
- The results can be viewed on the dashboard of the given anti-fraud provider.
- Our service can poll an endpoint offered by the provider.
- Finally, the provider could call an endpoint at our end.
During and after the payment some airline specific metadata can be collected, which can be forwarded to the given provider to make the fraud check process more accurate.
Conclusion
The rise of online airline booking has made the industry a prime target for sophisticated fraudsters, leading to significant financial losses and reputational damage. While basic anti-fraud measures exist, the complex nature of airline fraud demands specialized, unified solutions. By using such tools and and strategic partnerships, airlines can secure their systems, protect their finances, and maintain customer trust in an ever-evolving threat landscape.
As demonstrated by DGITAL's adaptable solution which is actively used by our partner, using a specialized service that offers an abstractions over the existing providers makes the integration easier.