Russian Post has teamed up with international online stores to prevent fraud in the distancetrading market through a cooperation with the US internet service Shopfans to take measures in case
of any suspicious parcels being sent to Russia.Under the cooperation, shipments arriving in Russia paid by credit cards using data obtained bycriminal action will be returned to internet stores.
If a credit card holder appeals against a payment made by an unknown person, Shopfans checks theaccount of the ‘fraud buyer’ in its system to confirm the illegal action. The company checks thedata on the payment transactions, the IP address of the PC from which they were carried out andinquires if the parcel has been sent to the Russian Federation. In case the parcel in question isfound within the Russian territory but has not reached the buyer yet, Shopfans sends a request toRussian Post to return the parcel.
Russian Post said it prevented delivery of six product shipments that were directed via asubsidiary in Berlin last month. They are expected to come back to the shipper soon. This way, theRussian postal operator helped considerably minimise the impact of fraud on distance trading.
Russian Post stressed that criminals cause significant damage to online stores. According to theestimates of the largest payment management company CyberSource Corporation, the financial lossesof US online stores in 2011 amounted to $3.4 billion which equals about 1% of total revenues. Theshare of suspicious transactions related to orders with international delivery exceeded 7%.
“This negatively impacts the overall situation in the field of distance selling and can lead toa reduced number of stores accepting foreign payments and fewer shoppers,” Shopfans stated.
The majority of orders come from Russia with 80%, and the remaining ones from Ukraine andBelarus. Every month, Shopfans detects up to 30 suspicious orders on average. Most of them are paidthrough illegally obtained credit card details.
“Russian Post has the possibility to track the parcel at each shipping stage, from the moment itappears on the Russian territory until the final delivery to the recipient. Therefore, thecooperation with the Russian postal operator seems to us the most productive and promising,” aspokesperson of Shopfans said.
