Customer Success Story
RETAIL DECISIONS
Retail Decisions Meets the Challenges of Global B2B Expansion
Retail Decisions is a risk management and online transaction services business focused on payment card fraud prevention and the delivery of multiple online services for retailers through an integrated infrastructure. The company was formed in January 2000 by the de-merger of Card Clear U.K. and Transaction Billing Resources (TBR) from the former Card Clear Group.
Retail Decisions currently protects nearly 10,000 retail sites in the UK for companies ranging from British Petroleum, Shell Oil and Texaco to Sainsbury's and Safeway. The company supplies its services to over 45 telecommunications companies globally including AT&T, MCI WorldCom, Qwest, SNET and Bell South. In 1999, Retail Decisions was involved in 80 percent of all operator-assisted, credit-card-billed calls in the U.S. - approximately 52 million transactions.
Combating online payment card fraud - and with a mission to materially reduce the fraud experience of its customers in retail, telecom and banking - Retail Decisions views the booming area of e-commerce as one of significant opportunity. Drawing on its experience in both retail and the card-not-present sectors, Retail Decisions has pioneered 'ebitGuard,' an e-commerce fraud detection and risk management system for retailers accepting payment cards over the Internet.
Bill Finnerty is Senior Vice President of Systems and Operations, responsible for the design, implementation, deployment and maintenance of mission-critical and enterprise-support systems for Retail Decisions. Since the company's revenue is based on a per-transaction basis, Finnerty's customer-facing systems must perform perfectly at all times. "Our mission is to reduce the fraud experience our customers may experience in their day-to-day business environment, whether a transaction is taking place over the phone, via the Internet or in some other card-not-present environment. Our service allows customers to detect fraud within sub-second response times - and to then stop the delivery of its service when fraud is detected."
Eliminating Fraud Where It Occurs
To achieve his goal, Finnerty and his team must hold fraud to a consistently low level. They must be able to communicate with customers anywhere in the world in fractions of a second. To do so, Finnerty needed a partner that could supply a reliable global network, outstanding service levels, global in-country support and one that already has an established global presence. "BT Infonet has been a successful global provisioner of data networks, period. BT Infonet's business is just that: It is not a telephone service or a company that provides excess bandwidth for global services. We have a similar focus in our business - and that is why we chose BT Infonet."
BT Infonet's Global Intranet Services are being rolled out to support Retail Decisions' offices in the U.S. and the UK. Retail Decisions plans to offer the service globally. "BT Infonet is providing us with the reliability we need for our mission-critical applications," comments Finnerty.
With the growth of e-commerce and the explosion of activity on the Internet, Retail Decisions has found a new market for its credit card authorisation and fraud detection services. "Servicing the e-commerce market requires a reliable, secure, 24/7 private network with global access and availability," states Finnerty. "BT Infonet's end-to-end managed network assists us in delivering world-class service to our customers, providing added value without adding additional infrastructure. It is what we need to stay one step ahead of the competition and to keep pace with the ever-changing patterns of fraud, especially in the rapidly growing e-commerce market."