Auriemma Roundtables Extends Payments Fraud Expertise to the Retail Community

(New York, NY):  Whenever fraudsters strike a retailer, from a data breach to a POS or online checkout vulnerability, the fraud’s implications cut increasingly deeper than mere monetary losses.  According to Auriemma Roundtables research, more than 50% of consumers who experience credit card fraud fault the retailer. These types of negative customer experiences can erode trust in the impacted retailer, and lead to a decrease in customer spending.

To help combat fraud and these related impacts, Auriemma will gather retailers on October 20 in New York City for its inaugural Retail Payments Fraud Roundtable, an ongoing, membership-based executive group with a suite of data and information-sharing activities and tools to combat fraud. This Roundtable will serve as a platform to curate best practices in fraud mitigation, from technology investments to collaboration with law enforcement.

As fraudsters adapt new strategies in a post-EMV environment, it’s vital that retailers be equipped to prevent, detect, and manage fraudulent activity – particularly as more fraud continues to migrate to online environments. The Roundtable was built to tackle these challenges for big-box, specialty and online retailers.

“Having served the Retail industry for more than 30 years, we are keenly attuned to its fraud-related challenges,” said Jeff Tennenbaum, Auriemma’s Director for Global Business Development. “This extension to Retail is a natural next step for a Roundtable platform that has proven to be a powerful fraud and risk-focused executive community in the credit, debit, and consumer banking verticals.”

Participants will gain access to all of Auriemma’s resources to fight fraud, including in-person executive meetings, peer fraud benchmarking, and custom peer research. Agenda topics for the group’s introductory session include:

• Issues stemming from the liability shift post-EMV migration, including higher chargeback rates
• Payment fraud trends, such as higher rates of card-not-present and account takeover fraud post-EMV
• Online fraud prevention, such as one-time passcodes
• Leveraging technologies, such as mobile device authentication
• Bolstering in-store and POS systems to prevent counterfeit, internal and other fraud types
• Optimizing internal teams’ organizational structure and best practices for fraud data reporting
• Preventing data compromises, as well as discussing playbooks for detecting breaches and managing reputational risk
• Working with law enforcement, from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to state and local agencies

“We’ve recently become a sponsor of the Merchant Advisory Group (MAG) as a way of demonstrating that our own commitment to the mitigation of payments fraud and other related schemes spans across industries,” Tennenbaum said. “We’re pleased that the MAG has invited us to speak about both chargebacks and mobile payments at their annual conference in late September, and are excited about the support our own Retail Payments Fraud Roundtable has garnered in a short period of time.”

For information on membership or attending the upcoming meeting, contact Jeff Tennenbaum at (212) 646-4453.

About Auriemma Group

Auriemma is one of the most recognized and respected boutique providers of advisory consulting services to the Payments, Lending, and Retail industries.  Our rich history of engaging with Retailers started 30 years ago, with the introduction of the first co-brand credit card program.  The work we do with Retailers in the context of Payments has helped them tangibly improve customer acquisition, retention, service, and loyalty.  Our range of services includes Industry Roundtables (best practices and benchmarking), Partnerships (co-brand and private label), Corporate Finance (transaction advisory), and Payment Insights (consumer research). For more information about Auriemma Roundtables, please contact Tom LaMagna at 212-323-7000.