BillingScore wins Best Financial Services Solution at the Mobile Messaging Awards 2011 for its mobile fraud solution

London, 23rd June 2011: BillingScore (www.billingscore.com) was last night awarded with a Mobile Messaging Award for the best Messaging Financial Services Solution for its premium rate traffic anti-fraud solution that protects and insures operators, SMS aggregators and service providers against mobile fraud.
Chris Newell
Chris Newell

The service was launched in November 2010 and has grown steadily ever since. Within weeks of launching the service, BillingScore had detected mobile fraud amounting to over £25,000 in one weekend on a previously good account.

“With the growth of the mobile payments and financial transactions comes the increased threat of fraud. At the moment, mobile payments fraud is a little known problem, but by 2015 it could be costing the global mobile industry up to US$122.5bn per year,” said Chris Newell, CEO of BillingScore. “This Global Messaging Award shows that the industry recognises the importance of a solution that enables SMS aggregators and service providers to protect themselves, thereby saving themselves money and improving the credibility of the burgeoning mobile purchasing industry.”

The BillingScore solution is based on a proprietary set of algorithms, developed over years of experience in the sector, which analyses, reports and blocks fraudulent transactions in real time. It assesses traffic by tracking 10 different data points and assigning each with an individual severity banding. The solution is accessed via an easy-to-view dashboard, and offers all those in the mobile purchasing value chain the ability to eliminate fraudulent activity.

An example of mobile fraud where the BillingScore solution could work is in the abuse of the system whereby mobile operators automatically give customers who are out of credit a little extra to allow them to make one last phone call or text message before they are cut off. If fraudsters discover that this could also be used on a premium rate service to buy content such as e-books and games, they can then set up fake services to sell non-existent content at this price and launder the money into their pockets. By sourcing out-of-credit SIM cards in their thousands and using the credit to buy the fake digital content, they would be able to make thousands of pounds in a single week for minimal effort.

BillingScore’s first customer, mobile messaging provider Txtlocal, has already saved tens of thousands of pounds with the BillingScore solution by monitoring and preventing premium rate fraud, and on top of that, has been able to detect and limit other potentially fraudulent transactions.

To find out more about BillingScore, have a free assessment of your premium rate transactions or to talk to a member of the BillingScore team about monitoring your traffic visit www.billingscore.com.