All posts by Kim Le
Every retailer invests heavily to drive shoppers to its website during the holidays. But after months of planning and thousands to millions of dollars spent on marketing, every customer journey comes down to one critical moment: Checkout. Today, fraud prevention means protecting revenue by ensuring legitimate customers complete their purchase, not just stopping bad actors. That's becoming increasingly important as holiday shopping evolves. In 2025, U.S. online holiday spending reached a record $257.8 billion,1 with shoppers spreading their purchases across months rather than just Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Every approval and every false decline has a bigger business impact than ever. Trust is becoming a conversion strategy Consumers expect retailers to protect them from fraud, but they don't want that protection to slow them down. That's where a significant opportunity exists. Experian research found that 52% of consumers expect retailers to protect them online, yet only 19% trust them to do so.2 Meanwhile, payment providers enjoy a positive trust gap because security happens quietly in the background with minimal friction. The takeaway? Customers don't equate more authentication with more trust. Instead, they equate less friction with better experiences. Learn how retailers can improve approvals, reduce false declines and build customer trust through layered identity intelligence. Download the white paper Invisible security is the future of checkout Modern identity verification, behavioral analytics and account intelligence allow retailers to recognize trusted customers behind the scenes – reserving step-up authentication only for higher-risk transactions. Why does that matter? Because friction is measurable. Research from Experian and cited in our white paper, shows that 16% of online transactions encounter suspected fraud friction, and 70% of that friction is unnecessary.3 Meanwhile, 25% of consumers abandon the purchase after experiencing onboarding friction, choosing a competitor instead. Reducing unnecessary friction isn't just good customer experience; it's good business. One retailer that used Experian's account ownership verification and identity intelligence captured more than $8 million in additional monthly revenue by improving auto-approval strategies and reducing customer friction. Learn how to protect revenue, not just prevent fraud As holiday traffic ramps up, retailers have an opportunity to rethink checkout as more than a fraud control. It's a revenue engine. Our latest white paper explores how layered identity strategies can help retailers improve approvals, reduce false declines and deliver the frictionless experiences customers increasingly expect. Download the full white paper to learn how invisible security can help strengthen customer trust while maximizing holiday conversion. Download now
Experian is proud to be a Thought Leadership Sponsor at this year’s Federal Identity Forum & Expo. Meet us on site at FedID!
Learn how e-commerce merchants can reduce card abandonment and increase conversions during the holiday shopping season.
With the rise of digital services, the telecom industry faces the need to mitigate fraud while streamlining the onboarding process.
The rapid acceleration of digital shopping and transactions highlights the need for marketplaces to refine their fraud and identity proofing strategies.
Download the ultimate guide for lenders to debunk popular buy now, pay later myths and how BNPL can benefit consumers and lenders.
Businesses must be aware of the risks associated with card not present fraud and take steps to protect themselves and their customers.
Online transactions face a higher chance of being declined because face-to-face transactions come with a higher degree of confidence. Businesses who fail to address this problem run the risk of losing the customer permanently, damaging their reputation and bottom line. What can e-commerce marketplace merchants do to increase the approval rate of online payments without making fraud worse? Here are three tips: 1. Broaden access to data beyond what’s in the authorization stream. Merchants use a variety of solutions to prevent fraud and verify identities, but typically use very limited data to approve a transaction through the authorization stream between a merchant and issuer. The issuing bank often only compares the purchase data to the address listed on the card owner’s account, which can create discrepancies when a customer is trying to send an order to an alternate address from their primary home. That’s why it’s important for merchants to augment their decisioning with additional data sources to help inform the true customer risk profile. 2. Leverage capabilities that can assess risk for both the transaction and the individual behind it. Today, merchants leverage limited data including email address data, device information and other technologies in silos to augment their address verification capabilities. The challenge with these tools is that each judge the risk of a specific component of the transaction or the individual. Where integration is lacking, false positives are amplified. 3. Collaborate and share expertise and data across merchants and issuers. How can Experian help? Leveraging our multidimensional data, technical expertise and advanced analytics capabilities, we can help businesses frictionlessly authenticate valid customers, thus increasing revenue by increased approval rates, without increasing fraud or operating expenses. Only Experian, through our frictionless account ownership verification solution, can connect a payment card to a provided identity at checkout beyond a name or address match. This solution combines Experian’s vast data assets – including over 500 million credit card account numbers on file in the U.S. across 250 million consumers – with our advanced analytics capabilities to match and assess the risk of the identity attributes presented to the merchant to the identity attributes contributed by the credit card’s issuer and to Experian’s network of credit and identity inquiries. The result: Experian's patent-pending REST API simply and frictionlessly improves a merchant’s customer experience and helps increase revenue while reducing their fraud and operating expenses. Get started with Experian's account ownership verification solution now.
Experian Link helps businesses remove unnecessary friction from card-not-present transactions by authentication consumer identities.
A false decline is a legitimate transaction that is not completed due to suspected fraud or the friction that occurs during verification. Read more.
Experian’s Ascend Intelligence Service platform has been named “Best Consumer Lending Product” in the sixth annual FinTech Breakthrough Awards.
As credit volumes recover from lows observed in 2021, lenders face new challenges – from increasing demand in customer expectations, to heightened competition, market volatility and a fierce war on talent. Many lenders have incorporated the foundational elements of credit analytics and seen significant initial returns. Now, it’s time for lenders to unlock even greater growth opportunities and operational efficiencies by exploring AI-powered solutions. Experian presented on a recent webinar hosted by Lendit Fintech, where Srikanth Geedipali, Senior Vice President of Global Analytics and AI for Experian, joined a panel of industry experts with representation from OPY and Citibank, to speak on how lenders can differentiate themselves by unlocking the power of advanced technologies such as AI and ML to address these emerging challenges. Watch the full webinar, NextGen Applications of AI in the Credit Lifecycle, and learn more about: Emerging trends in the AI/ML space that will drive innovation and differentiated solutions Use-cases for AI/ML across the lending lifecycle and how to leverage MLOps to industrialize analytics and improve speed and agility of decision-making How advanced technologies have driven impact for lenders of all sizes This webinar is a part of Lendit Fintech’s webinar series. To learn more about how leveraging AI/ML can help optimize your lending strategies, contact us today. Learn more about Ascend Intelligence Services
Experian was recently named a global fintech leader in the Center for Financial Professionals (CeFPro) Fintech Leaders 2022 report.
Shri Santhanam, Executive VP and GM of Experian's Global Analytics and Artificial Intelligence talks advanced analytics and AI in lending in recent podcast.
Experian has made the IDC 2021 Fintech Rankings Top 100, highlighting the best global providers of financial technology. Read more!