News from MoneyGram

Here is a press release from MoneyGram


MINNEAPOLIS, Jul 12, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) --
MoneyGram International (NYSE: MGI), a leading global payment services company, has introduced state-of-the-art technology to better protect its customers and agents from fraud. The enhanced technologies, which layer in protection through identification of suspicious transactions, computer and behavioural authentication and anti-phishing capabilities, are already dramatically reducing third-party consumer fraud at agent locations and online.


"MoneyGram takes fraud very seriously," said Dennis Wildsmith, vice president of transaction services and fraud prevention at MoneyGram. "We have established systems and processes to enhance safe and reliable money transfers, train our agents and employees about fraud, and to educate consumers on ways to safeguard their money. These new technologies are one more step in creating a world-class consumer anti-fraud program."

As part of the new measures to combat fraud, MoneyGram has implemented a solution called Global Compliance that identifies suspicious or high-risk transactions based on established criteria. Global Compliance helped prevent more than 1,000 customers from losing funds to fraud during its first 50 days. In addition, MoneyGram reduced internet purchase fraud by 30 percent during this same period.

The system scans each transaction looking for signs of fraud, and suspicious transactions are put on hold until the company can confirm if a transaction is legitimate or fraudulent. Global Compliance rules were developed specifically by MoneyGram, offering the company the flexibility to modify the rules as needed in order to respond more quickly to new and different kinds of fraud. Today, the tool is monitoring all send transactions from Canada and the United States to anywhere in the world.

"These are some of the multiple steps that will significantly increase our ability to mitigate fraud around the world," said Wildsmith. "We're already seeing positive results. Since its implementation, the system has been effective at stopping thousands of fraudulent transactions in the U.S. alone. Our goal is to have the system integrated with all point-of-sale equipment within two years, giving MoneyGram's global agents the ability to more effectively identify suspicious transactions and better enforce anti-fraud and anti-money laundering processes to protect consumers."

MoneyGram has instituted another step to protect its customers through a process that identifies individual consumers - who have made or attempted to make transactions that are known to be fraudulent - being victimized by scams. MoneyGram's new fraud solutions build on efforts already in place to mitigate fraud at the point of transaction. These include warnings on MoneyGram send forms for the customer to answer before sending money and agents verbally alerting customers when they see possible fraud taking place.

To further protect consumers, the company has also implemented an RSA Fraud Intelligence Solution, an anti-phishing tool that prevents cyber criminals from compromising agent computers and stealing customer information. The solution provides user and computer authentication technologies to prevent fraud from the point of login through completion of the transaction. RSA's technology also conducts behavioural monitoring - flagging transactions for review if a customer suddenly changes his/her pattern in making transfers.

Additionally, MoneyGram, a leading money order provider, has also redesigned its money orders to provide more highly visible safeguards against counterfeiting - the number one type of fraud for this kind of payment. The redesign incorporates visual and physical features that are easy to see on the front of each money order, not easy to replicate and contains an additional call to action for the recipient of a money order to verify its validity.