Fraud Prevention for Travel Agencies

The following best fraud prevention practices should be taken into consideration by travel agencies:

• Set aside large-value bookings for fraud review. Large-ticket transactions may increase your risk exposure to fraud and customer disputes. By carefully reviewing these types of bookings before settling the transactions, you can reduce your exposure. For best results, call the cardholders involved in the transactions to verify the bookings.
  
• Track key fraud characteristics. Tracking of known fraud transactions, identifying all of their key characteristics, and storing the information in a database will help assessing risk in future transactions. Such key characteristics include:
  
  • Passenger name, address, and telephone number.
    
  • Cardholder name, address, and telephone number.
    
  • Email address, Internet Protocol (IP) address, and Internet Service Protocol (ISP).
    
  • Transaction time, amount, airline, class of service, and travel itinerary.
    
• Screen high-risk bookings. Screening high-risk transactions will help detect and prevent fraud before it happens. High-risk bookings should be screened for characteristics, such as:
  
  • Passenger name that is different from the cardholder name.
    
  • First or business class tickets.
    
  • Electronic tickets or tickets not delivered to the billing address.
    
  • Date of travel that is less than six days after the ticket purchase.