Computop Integrates Quova's IP Geolocation into its Fraud Prevention Program
Leading German Payment Service Provider Uses Geolocation Data to Further Protect Merchants and Online Shoppers
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – September 30, 2008 – Quova, Inc., the leading provider of Internet geolocation data services, today announced that Computop, a leading payment processor in Germany,has integrated Quova’s IP geolocation data into Paygate, its online fraud prevention system, to help improve fraud detection. When a customer makes an online transaction Computop uses the Quova IP data to look for mismatches in the customer’s credit card billing address information and the location of the IP address and highlights any abnormalities in the distance, such as a customer logging in from Nigeria when their credit card billing address is in the United States. Suspicious transactions are then flagged for further review.
Computop serves more than 800 customers and processes 20 million payment transactions per year from customers such as bahn.co.uk, bcdtravel.com, cewe-photobook.co.uk, Fujitsu Siemens, strato.eu, telebid.com and TUI. As their transaction volume increases, so does the risk of fraudulent payments, to ensure a secure payment process to its customers and to differentiate between genuine and fraudulent customers more efficiently, Computop added IP geolocation data into its fraud detection system to be able to identify the country the customer was logging from. Computop has found that more then 75% of their fraud attempts are perpetrated with a foreign card or account. When the Paygate system detects a payment from an unauthorized country, they send a warning via e-mail to the merchant or decline payment.
Computop chose Quova s their IP geolocation data provider due to its 99.99% accuracy rate as well as its proven track record with other European payment processors such as GlobalCollect, ClickandBuy and Wirecard. Also, Quova’s ability to recognise satellite connections and anonymous Internet proxies, often used by fraudsters to disguise their true online location, has become a vital asset to the company’s growing customer base.
“We reviewed several IP geolocation vendors including Digital Envoy and Maxmind, but chose Quova because of their ability to identify transactions coming from satellite connections and anonymizers,” said Ralf Gladis, managing director of Computop. “The integration of the data onto our Paygate system was fast and smooth and being able to alert the merchant to its customer’s location has become a crucial part of our fraud prevention process.”
“We are very pleased that Quova is helping Computop to retain its existing customers through its robust fraud prevention system. Quova’s IP Geolocation service is an essential part of this innovation to stay one step ahead of online criminals, particularly in the e-payments space,” said Steve Sawyer, director of business development EMEA, Quova.“ A whole matrix of rules makes the fraud prevention machine very complex and in the e-payment business there are no cutting corners. Computop has recognized this and as a result, boasts a very solid position in the market.”
About Computop
Computop Wirtschaftsinformatik GmbH is the high performing payment service provider for merchants and partners. Over the last 10 years Computop has been developing and offering a complete range of products and services for professional payment processing within the call centre and Internet environment.
More than 800 merchants from different sectors rely on the wide ranging Computop Paygate portfolio and are processing round about 18 million payment transactions per year. The Computop Paygate combines the classic and innovative payment methods on a national and international level. The efficient fraud prevent tools bring about maximum security for the payments. This self-developed and flexible combination of payment services meet highest demands for quality and the security standard according to PCI. Computop works with processes according to ISO 9001 and therefore achieves highest quality regarding customer service and software development.
Partners in the financial sector are American Express, B+S Card Service, Concardis, Hypovereinsbank, Pago, Paypal, Postal bank and several Savings Banks. Over 800 customers from every sector of commerce – e.g. bahn.co.uk, bcdtravel.com, cewe-photobook.co.uk, quelle.com/en, strato.eu, telebid.com or TUI – attest to our high quality. www.computop.de
About Quova, Inc.
Quova, Inc. enables online businesses to instantly identify where a visitor to their Web site is geographically located. Major e-retailers, ad networks, banks and government agencies integrate Quova’s data into their Web applications to geo-target their advertising and content, detect identify theft and card-not-present fraud, manage digital content distribution, comply with local laws and more. Quova delivers detailed demographic and network characteristic data about an IP address, down to a city area. The data is 99.99% accurate at the country level and 96% accurate at the US State level (independent research conducted by Pricewaterhouse Coopers). Quova, founded in 2000, is based in Mountain View, California and is privately owned. www.quova.com.
Contact Quova:Catherine Koo (415) 992-4400 quova@lewispr.com
Contact Computop: Thilo Christ, TC Communications +49 (0)80 895 4617
thilo.christ@tc-communications.de
