How SMS Verification Can Help You Reduce Risk And Help You Identify Your Customers

Confirming customers is a pain, even under the most favorable of circumstances. It can be a challenge in times of high sales or in the event of a sudden rise in activity, like the COVID-19 epidemic. You don't want to lose money and goods to fraudsters, but you also want to avoid rejecting legitimate buyers due to false positives.

An answer could be found by using SMS verification. Let's look at SMS verification codes as tools to cut down on fraud risk and identify authentic customers.

What exactly is SMS Verification?

SMS verification is a method of preventing fraud that lets merchants sending SMS messages to buyers on their devices when they are making purchases. The customer will usually be asked to enter a 4- to 8-digit code sent via text as a method of verifying the purchase.

Like the name suggests, phone verification service refers to sending a text message to the buyer in the course of the buyer authentication process. This is something you've likely seen before. Perhaps you tried to log into your account or fill out an online form, but were required to input a code that was sent via text message into your browser. This is the way SMS verification works.

It's not something you'll need to utilize to confirm every purchase. However, it could be used as a part of the first-line verification process prior to manual reviews.

It is recommended to start with traditional fraud detection tools, as well as fraud scoring, which can help you assess the risk of each transaction. If the transaction contains certain indicators of fraud that indicate higher risk the transaction could send an SMS verification code. This is a one-time numeric code to confirm the phone number connected to the user's account.

Advantages of SMS Verification

Making each purchase subject to manual review is the most accurate method of preventing fraud. However, this method is time-consuming and expensive, so it is not advisable to authenticate every transaction. SMS verification codes are a fast and inexpensive method of quickly and effortlessly validate and approve orders without resorting to manual reviews. By using sms verification service, you can authenticate a variety of orders that would otherwise require manual oversight or which might get denied by the fraud scoring system.

SMS verification codes enable you to verify and approve orders quickly and efficiently without the need to review manually. Using SMS verification, you are able to verify many orders that normally require human oversight or which might get rejected by fraud scoring technology.

SMS verification is also an effective way to stop the most common fraud strategies, such as account takeover and simple bot attacks. If the fraudster doesn't have access to the device that is connected to the buyer's account and is unable to access the authentication code and complete the purchase fraudulently.

You may be concerned about the possibility that you're worried that requiring SMS verification for certain purchases will cause unnecessary friction and lead customers to abandon orders. However, contemporary customers are extremely familiar with SMS verification codes as of now. They will view them in a positive light and appreciate that you're taking additional steps to ensure their accounts are secure.

All mobile devices are able to use SMS verification codes. They're also easy to integrate into existing checkout processes.

SMS Verification: The disadvantages

What could possibly be considered to be the most important lesson from the many benefits of SMS verification?

These codes may not stop all attacks under all circumstances. Your customer must link their number to your phone number prior to purchasing in order to avoid account takeover tactics. Otherwise, asking the buyer to verify the code they received at checkout wouldn't prevent fraud: fraudsters could simply substitute their own phone numbers for that of the buyer.

The buyer also needs to be able to access their phone (and have reception) to receive the code. Buyers who may not have a phone on-hand are unable to finish their purchase. Or else, you will be required to devise a different option that lets buyers verify purchases without their mobile phones.

Overreliance on SMS authentication poses an opportunity. While people are comfortable making use of codes occasionally however, it could cause customers to become disinterested when they are doing it all the time. It is also necessary to pay for each message; overusing SMS codes could increase your expenses.

There are security issues that could affect sms blast service. There is a possibility that fraudsters could use malware to intercept SMS messages and then deceive the consumer's identity with a different SIM card.