Top 10 Payment and Card Solution Companies - 2015

G2 Web Services: Critical Solutions to Identify Merchant Risk

Allison Guidette, CEO

Financial institutions supporting global payments must remain vigilant in the face of rapidlychanging risks and fraud. With consumer demand, payment options, channels and places to shop evolving at a dizzying rate, fraudsters seeking access to the payment system to perpetuate their crimes exploit the complexity and time it takes for risk policies to catch up. Hundreds of banks, representing nearly 60 percent of global merchant outlets, turn to G2 Web Services for help. G2 is a WA-based firm providing comprehensive merchant risk insight that helps acquirers and commercial banks, and their value chain partners, manage an appropriate level of risk in their merchant and business customer portfolios and protect against brand damaging, illegal, and non compliant merchant activity.

Founded in 2004, G2 derives its name from intelligence community jargon, used first in WWII, to describe mission critical, risk-reducing intelligence. “Initially, G2 focused on helping acquiring banks spot illegal and brand damaging content in websites of their e-commerce merchants; later we also helped clients which now include commercial banks as well as acquirers to understand other hard-to-spot risks, including third party service providers and transaction laundering, and to predict the potential risk of a new merchant,” briefs Allison Guidette, CEO, G2 Web Services. “Our data, technology, and experienced team assist our customers to make smart decisions regarding new customers and their existing customer portfolio.”

The company recently expanded its monitoring suite, which includes Persistent Merchant Monitoring (PMM), to introduce Transaction Laundering Detection (TLD). Whereas PMM is the industry’s leading solution to monitor merchant websites for non-compliant, illegal and brand damaging content, TLD adds several more layers of protection to identify illegal merchants who are processing transactions through known merchants. Transaction laundering is a pernicious and growing challenge as bad actors find new ways to circumvent detection and perpetuate their crimes.

G2 data, technology, and experienced team assist risk professionals and business managers to make smart decisions regarding new customers and their existing customer portfolio

G2 also offers products to assist with boarding new merchants and business customers. “Our boarding solutions enable CIOs, risk professionals, and product managers to make the smartest decisions about which merchants and business customers to underwrite,” states Allison. For example, the G2 Compass Score™ uses proprietary data, gathered globally over the past 11 years, and a sophisticated set of algorithms to assign a near-instant risk score to the merchant. The higher the risk score, the higher the likelihood for that merchant to engage in future bad activities, and the more diligence is required.

In one instance, a G2 client was in dire need of a solution to streamline its onboarding process and support sensible growth. By implementing G2 Compass Score, the client reduced the boarding applications that needed manual review by nearly 93 percent. The solution also decreased the time needed to process manual reviews from 30 to 15 minutes per applications.

With its foundation in the G2 Merchant Risk Platform™ and G2 Merchant Map™, the company is proud to be the industry’s leading provider of merchant risk solutions. “The Merchant Map offers current and historical merchant relationships, merchant risk history and insight into merchant behaviors that no one else can provide. It helps power G2’s boarding, monitoring and fraud detection solutions,” opines Allison. G2 plans to launch the next iteration of the PMM portal in just a few months, and the G2 Labs expect to stay very busy: “Given the rate and pace of change, G2 innovation— including moving closer to real-time alerting, additional customization and enhanced monitoring tools—will also be unrelenting,” concludes Allison.