As Danes continue to move to the online space for payments, an increasing number of fraudulent websites have come to formation.
It has led to Danske Bank beginning the process of blocking card payments on fake webshops in collaboration with e-mærket – the Danish virtual label guaranteeing secure, transparent online shopping.
Shopping online on Danish and foreign webshops is fast, easy and convenient, but not all webshops are real. Often, the fake webshops lure with offers too good to resist, but the buyer may end up with a fake product or never receive the product, or end up giving away sensitive information.
Toke Mølgaard, Head of Communications at e-mærket, commented on the news: “Thousands of fake webshops are run by foreign criminals far away from Denmark, which makes it complicated for police investigation.
“The purpose of this new collaboration between Danske Bank and e-mærket is to block card payments that are initiated on fake webshops, until they are closed down by the authorities”, Toke Mølgaard explains, who has reported 150,000 fake webshops to the State Prosecutor for Serious Economic and International Crime. These cases will also be passed on to Europol.”
It comes as Danske Bank has continued to enhance its focus on protecting customers from fake webshops and in 2019 alone, more than 350,000 card payments were blocked. With the new collaboration, Danske Bank will be able to intensify its efforts going forward.
Ketil Clorius, Global Head of Fraud Management in Danske Bank, added: “For several years we have worked intensively to identify these fake webshops and stop as many card payments as possible. Today we prevent most of the payments, but we continuously improve to protect our customers from the fraudsters. This is why I am extremely pleased with this new collaboration with e-mærket, which will certainly help us decrease the number of fraud cases in Denmark.
“Fraud online comes in many shapes and no matter what you do to prevent fraud, there is always a risk of becoming a victim of the fraudsters. Fraud has become a global challenge and the fraudsters become better and better at finding ways to trick the customer.
“We are in an arms race against these fraudsters, which requires the individual to constantly pay attention when shopping online.”
