[Music]
My name is Kapil Tandon and today we have a special guest, Katie with us.
Katie: Hi Kapil: Can you tell us a little bit about
you as well as your business.
Katie: Yes absolutely and thank you so much for
having me.
So my name is Katie McGinn, I lead our e-commerce practice at Ekata.
And Ekata is an identity verification service headquartered here in Seattle.
We do provide global identity verification
to companies such as retailers, credit card brands, marketplaces, financial
institutions as well.
And we're really focused on providing verification around
an email address, phone number, address, IP and a person, Also figuring out how do
they all connect with each other and what kind of behavior is around each of
them.
So we're doing this on a global base not only with our customers but
also with our global offices as well.
Kapil: That is very cool.
So tell me how does it really work in terms of the value prop
for the customer itself.
Katie: Yeah, absolutely so there's many different things that a
customer may be looking to achieve all of which include potentially reducing
their chargebacks, reducing their manual review, increasing their payment
acceptance rates, reducing customer insults.
There's many different things that our customers may be looking
at depending on the use-case, but we really like to collaborate with them and
figure out what their problem is and how we can work together to solve it.
Kapil: Nice.
So tell me a little bit about you know how
does your service work with fraud protection providers all together, how is
it complementary in the world to be able to help the customers at the end of the
day?
Katie: Absolutely, so we find that we're very complimentary to fraud
platforms for example because ultimately, we're a data company.
We're really focused on how can we be the best
at providing verification and validation around these five core data elements.
We work with fraud platforms that that may
be doing pre-auth decisioning and machine learning,
post-auth decisioning via rule-base and we're a plugin to be able to help
supplement the the machine that they have that's helping the end-user make
the ultimate decision.
Kapil: Got it.
So basically helping the merchants as well as the banks in
actually getting the transactions approved in a much more seamless fashion
all together which actually ends up being a great service for the customer.
Katie: Absolutely.
That's the end goal, how can we all protect the customer.
Kapil: And how do you see the space changing all up over time?
Katie: Yeah, that's a really great question.
I've been working with a Ekata for five years and
really when we when I first started working we were focused on how to reduce
chargebacks and how to reduce manual review.
I think that's really where the fraud industry was focused too and
they've gotten really good at it, and now we're at the point where before
it was that fraud was a cost center in terms of the overarching company but
really I think where things are shifting is their figuring out how they can they become
a revenue generator and really how can they improve the customer
experience.
How can they remove the friction so that they can get as many
customers on-boarded whether it's through account creation and as many
customers through the ultimate transaction process to increase the
acceptance rates.
So the further ahead that a merchant can get into the
customer lifecycle the minute they hit the page, the minute they create an
account, the minute they hit submit to ask for a pre authorization of a
transaction, the further ahead they can get in assessing the risk and understanding
their customer, the better they can give their customer an experience and provide
and and increase that revenue.
Kapil: That is very cool.
So you guys work with a lot of fraud prediction solutions.
What do you find unique about Dynamics 365 Fraud
Protection?
Katie: Yeah that's a really great question.
We do, we work with a lot of different fraud solution providers and
I think there's room for everyone in the market and I do think is unique
about Dynamics Fraud Protection is the fact that you guys have created the
trusted mid and the transaction booster.
So Microsoft itself was able to go and create these individual
relationships with the banks and increase your acceptance rates at a
pretty impressive rate.
So now rather than the merchants having to go and create their own individual
relationships they can use their product your product.
So I really would love to hear more about what your guys's
thought process was behind that?
Kapil: Right I mean our focus has been on actually
boosting the revenue for the customers at the
end of the day.
And our customers mean you know merchants altogether.
The bottom line is there are three main players for us in
boosting the revenue.
The first part is obviously having a seamless experience
for the customer, but the second one is the merchant itself, by reducing fraud, by
reducing the operation expenses, and by increasing that acceptance rate, it
actually increases their revenue.
But last but not the least is all about the
banks.
And again increasing the acceptance rates with them,
actually increases their revenue.
So at the end of the day we wanted to build an
ecosystem which actually gains from each other, versus just one.
Just focusing on fraud protection doesn't truly help the
revenue, you know, by actually balancing it out between the machine learning on
fraud protection, as well as using operation research, to actually boost and
focus on revenue, helps a lot in terms of actually ensuring the entire ecosystem
is healthy.
Kaite: That's fantastic.
That's really exciting because I think that
really is the future of the fraud ecosystem so it's exciting to see where
you guys are going.
Kapil: I'm glad we're on the same page Katie.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Katie: Thank you so much for having me, really appreciate it.
[Music]