Building Trust: reflections on the first day of MRC

We had a fantastic dinner last night in the Connoisseur Room in the Guinness StoreHouse with a few clients and friends. Matching Guinness brews with food is possibly not going to become a thing outside of St James Gate, but as a novelty it was very enjoyable. And the room was pretty special.

This morning was therefore surprisingly productive. Deepest thanks to Colm O’Donaill and all the team at eShopWorld who were immense in supporting us and presenting the case study of their use of Ravelin. Fully 70 people in the room and some great questions at the end is usually a good sign of engagement.

It is gratifying to see that level of interest in what we are doing. And also great I think for the fraud industry to see some fully-formed machine learning implementations emerge in the market and providing real measurable improvement in acceptance rates and success in correctly identifying fraudulent transactions.

@charliejnwalker @ravelinhq presenting on a few of the success stories of our customer mitigating fraud and increasing acceptance rates. @MerchRisk #MRCDublin18 pic.twitter.com/i2KXB1v7fD

— Roger Kruger (@Roger_Kruger1) May 15, 2018

Later in the day I managed to catch the AirBnB presentation, which was striking in the similarities of their approach to what we are doing with merchants. AirBnB has unique and unusual characteristics some good and some bad for fraud detection. Their self-built system show the advantages of having access to and being able to afford some of the Valley’s best talent.

I asked a question about how the tension is resolved within AirBnB around how to balance the desire for new growth and trying to be sensible about fraud. This is a frequent and healthy discussion we have with our clients; healthy because it’s based on the reality of a trade off between growth and security. Within AirBnB they keep the discussion fact-based and look to illustrate the implications of decisions made.

That’s our goal too and keeping the discussions fact-based, reasoned and directed at a shared goal is the only way to go. The MRC Dublin event is an invaluable resource in pushing these discussions up the agenda. The days of the fraud team working silently in the basement are over. As Colm was able to address today it’s a business case that needs to elbow its way up the agenda and for the industry to realise just how much value it brings and and can bring.

If you'd like to meet us at MRC Dublin, please e-mail me directly at gerry.carr@ravelin.com or stop by Booth 19.

Learn more about online payment fraud here.