DALLAS, June 5, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — AT&T plans to pilot a new service that arms companies with the ability to confirm the location of participating customers who opt-in to advanced protection against fraud when they travel internationally. With this service, AT&T is adding a new capability to its Location Information Services portfolio, which helps businesses make financial and mobile transactions safer and easier for AT&T mobile subscribers.
AT&T plans to make the new Location Information Services capability available in more than 150 countries. The company will begin a pilot this summer, and expects to deploy the service to enterprise customers later this year.
The Nilson Report, a financial industry trade publication, shows the cost of global payment card fraud grew by 10.2 percent in 2013 to reach $12.42 billion1. The top challenge in controlling international fraud last year was verification of customer identity, reports Javelin Strategy & Research.2
The new Location Information Services capability, which is enabled through an application program interface (API), can proactively notify companies when their customers who opt-in for the service arrive in a new country. For example-
- A credit card company could confirm its customer has traveled to a new country as soon as she lands and turns on her mobile device.
- The capability can help credit card companies make more informed decisions, such as whether to approve or decline purchases in an international country.
- A company could also use the new capability to track the movement of equipment, which could help prevent stolen assets.
- A hospitality company may offer an enhanced experience for travelers and reference a customer’s location to provide local restaurant listings
Companies want to get ahead of customer expectations, offer new ways to solve challenges and differentiate from their competitors,” said Laura Merling, Vice President of Business Digital Experience, AT&T. “Our new Location Information Services API does that by allowing enterprises to provide an extra layer of credit card security, keep track of valuable assets, and enhance a traveler’s experience with timely local information.”
The new Location Information Services capability allows businesses to access AT&T network data to locate a participating user’s device to authenticate that users’ location, helping to protect against potential fraud. This new capability builds on AT&T’s Mobile Identity API Toolkit, which launched in December 2013. The Mobile Identity API Toolkit helps make mobile transactions safer by allowing businesses to authenticate the identities of AT&T subscribers on the AT&T network.
For a full list of AT&T’s Location Information Services portfolio, visit www.att.com/locationbasedservices. To apply for access to the service, businesses should contact their account representative or send an email to enterpriseAPIs@att.com.
