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Why Digital Trust is Key for Your Online Business

Imagine signing up for a dating app only to receive aggressive and hateful messages, calling a taxi because you’re late for work but opening the app to find jacked up prices, or placing funds in an e-wallet to then have your funds stolen. Once digital trust is broken, users may never use the same app again. Amongst the competition and pool of alternatives, why should they?

Trust is incredibly important in the digital sphere where users are interacting and transacting with other users and businesses. But they have never met these users before and don’t have a relationship with them. When done right, customer trust becomes a key competitive advantage and an important driver for customer acquisition and retention.  

But digital trust is a two-way street. While users want to trust the online platforms they’re using, businesses want to be able to trust their users too.  

Fraud Demolishes Trust

Fake accounts have been the talk of 2022. Fraudsters use bots and emulators to create fake accounts and ruin the experience for genuine users on a platform. Whether it’s to conduct payment fraud or reuse the same promotion multiple times, fake accounts act as a launchpad for a myriad of fraudulent activities. 

Take the gaming industry for example. A fraudster uses fake accounts to enter tournaments and increase their chances of winning, creating an unfair playing field. If a genuine user feels the game has been rigged, they would likely switch to a competitor app. 

Account takeover (ATO) fraud is another fraud attack that can diminish digital trust. ATOs happen when fraudsters gain unauthorized access to user accounts with stolen credentials, usually to steal funds or personal information. Once in the account, fraudsters can do a number of things such as purchasing items with the account holder’s stored cards, selling the account to someone else, or changing the account password to lock the genuine user out. An account takeover often breaks customer trust and could result in the user leaving the platform for good. 

Digital Trust for Online Businesses

For businesses, the impact of fraud attacks go far beyond financial losses. Fraud attacks  demolish brand reputation, customer confidence, and as a result, push users away from the platform and towards alternatives. This puts a dent in company growth. 

Businesses also begin to question which users to trust after fraud attacks, and to protect the platform and their genuine users, may implement overly strict anti-fraud measures. While fraud prevention measures help them in stopping fraud, it can also create friction and push customers away. Too many false declines can throw a wrench in a seamless user experience.

How SHIELD Can Help 

SHIELD’s technology empowers online businesses to stop fraud and build trust without adding friction to the user experience. One advantage of SHIELD’s technology is that it doesn’t require Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and traditional KYC methods to detect fraudulent activity. This saves a customer from having to complete layers of security checks before making a transaction. 

One of the features of SHIELD’s technology that enables online businesses to build trust on their platform is the SHIELD ID, a persistent device ID that remains unique no matter how fraudsters try to spoof their devices. For example, a social media platform can detect a fraudster using a single device to send hate messages across multiple different fake accounts. This empowers them with the capability to block fake accounts from their platform and maintain a pleasant digital environment for their genuine users.

On top of this, SHIELD Risk Indicators expose, in real time, the malicious tools used to conduct fraudulent activity. A social media platform would be able to tell if a fraudster is using bots and emulators to create the fake accounts that are being used to send hateful messages. 

Along with the SHIELD ID and SHIELD Risk Indicators, there’s also the SHIELD Trust Score, which enables businesses to know if a device session can be trusted. With this, businesses are empowered to take instant action against accounts that may be conducting malicious activity. 

SHIELD provides companies with real-time risk intelligence, empowering online businesses to stop fraudsters before they can do any damage. By doing so, they are able to maintain trust on their platform and know which users to trust. 

Learn how our technology can help you build trust on your platform