New Functionality – Outlet Transaction Restriction

Monday, 28 November 2011

Fight Fraud In Your Stores!

Are you considering the launch of a gift card/prepaid card programme? Do you have a large store network spanning multiple locations (tens or maybe even hundreds)? Are you concerned about fraudulent staff activity in some or all of these locations? If you answered yes to some or all of these questions then you should come and talk to us.

A New York Times article I came across earlier this year opened with “Gift cards are just so easy — so easy for dishonest employees to exploit, that is”, the article went on to cite an example at the Saks flagship store in Manhattan, where a 23-year-old sales clerk was caught ringing up $130,000 in false merchandise returns and siphoning the money onto a gift card.

To dishonest employees, gift cards can be like currency. According to the NY Times article they are “almost as good as the U.S. dollar”. The numbers are frightening… ”employee fraud involving gift cards appears to be growing sharply as retailers struggle to contain overall theft, now estimated at $36 billion a year in the industry, or 1.51 percent of retail sales, according to a leading national study.”

In Q4, Card Commerce rolled out its ‘outlet transaction restriction’ (OTR) functionality, where retailers can decide which prepaid transactions apply to which outlets. “Trustworthy” outlets can be set for full transaction access, while “less trustworthy” or newly opened outlets can be set to only allow balance enquiry and redemption (i.e. disable the top-up function from these outlets).

The functionality is controlled centrally, via the Card Commerce portal (Card Manager) and no changes are required to your existing estate of terminals or epos devices. Access to the OTR functionality within Card Manager is strictly controlled via our user access control layer, ensuring only a controlled set of super users can change an outlet’s transaction access.

The OTR functionality is intuitive and many outlets can be set with the same transaction restrictions at the same time via easy-to-use list boxes. All changes take effect immediately, allowing you complete control and flexibility over the set of outlet’s you deem trustworthy or untrustworthy as the case may be.

So if you’re concerned about employee fraud in the context of rolling out a gift card program, don’t worry, Card Commerce can provide you with the tools to reduce or even eradicate it.

PG