12 Feb 2008
National Australia Bank (NAB) has installed a real-time merchant payments processing switch from Australian EFT software firm Distra. The switch has been in production at NAB, one of Australia's top four banks, since October 2007, Distra says.
Mike Aston, Distra’s CEO, tells
ePaynews that real-time switches offer distinct advantages over switches that use older, legacy technologies. Distra’s switch is designed to interrupt an individual transaction, if certain criteria are met or alarms triggered. The switch can then in turn trigger a variety of actions and alerts as appropriate, Aston says.
“Being a real-time, rather than a legacy, switch, our system can both detect and react to online transactions immediately, if they appear to be fraudulent,” Aston explains.
According to Aston, current legacy-based fraud systems tend to be retrospective. “This means that they look for patterns emerging after an event has occurred,” he says. “At best, they may monitor the transaction stream for erroneous items, but cannot normally interrupt the process, once something is flagged.”
Aston says that the biggest threat in online fraud now comes from organized crime. “This will probably involve one large fraudulent transaction, rather than a pattern of small fraudulent transactions over time,” he argues.
As a result, retrospective pattern-monitoring systems are ineffective, as they may only alert the processor to the fraudulent event occurring but be unable to stop it.
In the UK, Distra’s EFT technology is being used by payments services provider VocaLink for the new Faster Payment System being rolled out by British banks. This new platform will offer same-day funds transfers instead of the three-to-four-day clearing cycle currently in place in the UK.
For the official press release click here
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