Can social media help credit unions prevent fraud?

by. Nicole Reyes

What if your mobile banking app had the power to talk to your customers’ social media accounts? Imagine the things it could learn – a customer’s location, for example. By syncing banking and social apps, fraud analysts may have a better idea when fraudsters are at work.

Take Facebook’s geo-location data, for example. By using this data to understand where a user is at any given moment, a banking app would be in a good position to make an educated guess on the validity of the that user’s transactions.

At least one fraud-prevention provider is hoping social media fraud analysis will catch on in the U.S. Feedzai, a European antifraud technology company, is going out with a product it says “uses machine-based learning in real time to fight fraud in the e-commerce, mobile and physical sales channels.”

What do you think about this type of avenue for fraud prevention? Maybe the more pertinent question is what consumers would think. How willing would they be to link their Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram accounts with your mobile banking app?

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