Equifax Launched Fraud Protection Tool for Small Businesses on Shopify

Equifax has launched a fraud protection tool for Shopify designed for small business merchants.

The new Kount Essentials application joins the company’s Kount Advanced app for Shopify, which is designed for larger businesses with dedicated fraud management teams, Equifax said in a Wednesday (May 3) press release.

“Merchants on Shopify can now choose between Kount Essentials or Kount Advanced, depending on which features best suit their business,” Adam Gunther, senior vice president and chief product officer at Equifax Digital Solutions, said in the release. “In offering two tiers of protection, Equifax is able to provide cutting-edge technology to all merchants that is as adaptive as modern fraud threats.”

To meet the needs of small businesses, the new Kount Essentials features no-code, plug-and-play installation and onboarding; installation that can be done in minutes; and in-app decisioning with results that can be viewed from the merchant’s Shopify dashboard, according to the press release.

The new fraud detection and prevention application is available on the Shopify App Store, and on-demand support and customizable policies are offered, the release said.

“We recognize the unique challenges faced by small businesses, and with the introduction of Kount Essentials, we’re making our award-winning fraud prevention capabilities available to growing organizations,” Gunther said in the release.

Merchants’ cumulative losses from fraud could exceed hundreds of billions of dollars through the next few years — topping $340 billion, Brad Wiskirchen, senior vice president and general manager at Kount, an Equifax company, told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster in an interview posted in December 2022.

The past year has shown several attack vectors to be on the rise, including card not present fraud, synthetic ID fraud, illegitimate chargebacks and card testing schemes, Wiskirchen said at the time.

“More than half the merchants that we’ve talked to have experienced growth in these attempts, and account takeover fraud is always prevalent,” Wiskirchen said.

A robust fraud prevention methodology can help merchants secure the journey for their legitimate customers without disrupting the sales cycle and creating a poor buying experience, Wendi Lete, chief customer experience officer at Kount, wrote in the PYMNTS eBook, “2023 Payments New Year’s Resolutions.”

“What is becoming quite clear is that accurate and timely data, in combination with technology and a well-rounded strategy, are the best components to reach the optimal point of fraud prevention and revenue generation,” Lete wrote.