Read “The State of Fraud 2023” report
The velocity of ecommerce’s digital transformation was breathtaking enough in the before times. But since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the pace of change has become head-spinning and all but unsustainable for retailers contemplating going it alone.
In fact, 63% of retailers say they prefer to turn to an outside provider when they launch a new technology, according to a new report by Digital Commerce 360, a global leader in ecommerce research and media.
“Vendors offer a slate of services to give retailers everything they need to get their ecommerce operations up and running,” says the report, “2022 Leading Vendors to the Top 1000 Retailers.” “And after stores were temporarily closed in 2020, prompting more shoppers to shop online, retailers had to keep up and stay top-of-mind to consumers.”
As the report outlines through a survey of the biggest brands in retail, many kept up by deploying innovative technology designed during and for the digital age. Beyond providing the state of online retail at the dawn of 2022, the leading vendors report lists the top 10 vendors in a range of disciplines vital to enterprise retail operations.
We’re pleased to note that Digital Commerce 360 named Signifyd the No. 1 payment security and online fraud prevention solutions to the largest 1000 retailers based in the U.S.
Signifyd checks the boxes on retailers’ 2022 wish lists
“We were, of course, delighted that Digital Commerce 360’s analysis put us at the top of the list of those providing commerce protection to enterprise retailers, but I can’t say we were surprised,” Signifyd CEO Raj Ramanand said of the ranking. “Not to sound immodest, but if you look at what enterprise retailers said was important to them in the survey, you pretty much see a description of the value that Signifyd consistently provides for some of the world’s largest retailers.”
- The coronavirus pandemic has increased the urgency around digital transformation for retailers, Digital Commerce 360 reports in a new study of technology vendors.
- Merchants’ top priorities are to attract new customers, improve customers’ experiences, improve conversion rates, retain existing customers and generate more sales from those existing customers.
- Signifyd’s technology helps in all five of those key areas.
- Signifyd is the top choice of enterprise retailers for payments security and friendly fraud prevention, according to Digital Commerce 360’s “2022 Leading Vendors to the Top 1000 Retailers” report.
In fact, when Digital Commerce 360 asked 93 enterprise retailers why they were planning to increase spending on technology in 2022, they said their highest priorities were to attract new customers, improve customer experience, improve conversion rates, retain existing customers and generate more sales from those existing customers.
You might say those goals represent the sweet spot of Signifyd Commerce Protection Platform. The platform relies on Signifyd’s Commerce Network of thousands of merchants. Applying machine learning to the vast number of transactions on the network allows Signifyd to understand the identity and intent behind every order, customer dispute and return request. Those insights mean merchants don’t have to add friction to consumers’ shopping journeys, all of which allows willing buyers to purchase from willing sellers.
Signifyd leads the pack in offering commerce protection for enterprise retailers
By virtue of serving more Top 1000 retailers than its competitors and with a customer list that includes Walmart, Samsung, eBay, Wish, Lacoste and others, Signifyd placed above both industry stalwarts and relative new-comers on Digital Commerce 360’s list. Lower on the list of payment security and Ecommerce Fraud Solution providers were Cybersource, Accertify, ClearSale, McAfee, PayPal, Authorize.net, Chase Merchant Services, Radial, Riskified and Forter.
Now in its second decade, Signifyd launched in 2011 as a new breed of payment fraud protection vendor that embraced artificial intelligence and built learning systems so accurate that Signifyd backs its decisions with a financial guarantee.
The company was recognized three years ago by venture capitalist Mary Meeker, who listed Signifyd among a federation of future-focused firms that were proving the infrastructure for successful retailers that had already seized upon the agile strategy that the Digital Commerce 360 report heralds.
And what was true three years ago, is doubly true today.
Signifyd’s customer base was among the big beneficiaries of the whopping ecommerce acceleration ignited by the COVID-19 pandemic. Signifyd’s data shows that retailers experienced a 50% to 60% increase in order volumes in 2020 and an additional 20% in 2021. In addition, there has been a big uptick in curbside and pick-up-in-store transactions — transactions teeming with security vulnerabilities, mostly because they come with no delivery address and inconsistent identity verification at pickup.
COVID left merchants facing a trilemma — higher volume, faster fulfillment and fraud
This created a retail trilemma – the challenge of serving dramatically higher order volumes while simultaneously meeting faster fulfillment expectations and sidestepping fraud, Signifyd CMO Indy Guha told Digital Commerce 360. While ecommerce retailers focused on customer convenience and speed, criminals concentrated on cashing in. For its part, Signifyd zeroed in on squashing their efforts.
As intensely as Signifyd focuses on security fraud and prevention, it’s worth reiterating that the company’s overall goal is to enable merchants to attract and retain online retail customers and turn them into repeat customers.
There are many other technological aspects involved in enhancing the ecommerce experience, including customer service software, customer relationship management, a strong content delivery network, and affiliate marketing and channel management. But fraud and commerce protection are among the most important because ecommerce business frauds is growing and evolving and merchants must find the right balance between securing their businesses and providing a friction-free shopping experience for their customers.
Signifyd provides that balance for retailers because it has previously seen at least some signals from 98% of the orders placed on its network. This plays a huge role in deliberately not refusing an order that otherwise might be flagged for fraud. Knowledge of a shopper helps a merchant “correctly assess the lifetime value potential of any shopping session,” Guha says.
Today, Guha adds, the average online merchant without technologically advanced commerce protection declines 5% to 15% of legitimate checkout attempts.
“Would you yank one in 10 people out of the line at the cash register at a brick-and-mortar store?” Guha asks rhetorically. “Why is that acceptable online? A retailer cannot afford this kind of inefficiency as more of their revenue moves online.”
The checklist for innovative risk management
Here is a quick check-list for online retailers who want to know what they’re doing right and doing wrong in implementing chargeback fraud protection, according to a Frost & Sullivan analysis of the guaranteed Merchant Fraud Protection market:
- Enterprise fraud protection must provide friction-free customer experiences. Systems must strike the right balance between protecting the retailer and staying out of the way of a consumer intending to buy. Requiring a customer to log in for every purchase is too cumbersome and mistakenly canceling legitimate orders for fear of fraud is unacceptable.
- Old methods aren’t up to the task required by modern consumers and ecommerce enterprises. Traditional fraud management among large retailers tends to rely too heavily on rules-based systems and manual fraud review. These systems prod fraud teams to make conservative decisions, undermining sales.
- Identify what a fraud service provider needs to do to succeed. Their systems need to be anchored by machine learning models that absorb high-quality data across different sales channels. In addition, case management must be automated to heighten efficiency and technology, and customer support needs to be flexible because different retailers have different needs.
Research by Digital Commerce 360 found that retailers are increasingly seeing the benefits of utilizing the services of a vendor – Signifyd and others – rather than running all the many parts of their ecommerce operations themselves. That’s why the 63% that Digital Commerce 360 surveyed chose to use a vendor in 2021 when implementing a new technology. And why well over two-thirds of them say they plan to spend more on ecommerce technology and services over the next year.
This is clearly a good thing for customers, as well as retailers.
Photo by Carl Heyerdahl on Unsplash
Are you looking to upgrade your payment security and fraud management to 2022 standards? We can help.
