Part 3: How HauntPay Helps Prevent Ticketing Fraud

As the world becomes more connected, it becomes easier and easier for scammers to attempt fraudulent transactions. 

Any business can be susceptible to fraud, but haunted attractions are being increasingly targeted by scammers, making them vulnerable to fraud and transaction disputes which can create huge (and expensive) headaches for haunt owners. 

This is the third installment in our three-part series all about reducing fraud at your haunt. We previously covered how to prevent ticketing fraud in person and online. But we haven’t talked yet about one of the most important things haunt owners can do to protect their businesses against fraud: choosing the right ticketing provider. 

You might think that all ticketing providers offer the same level of fraud-busting protection, but that’s not the case. 

Why is your ticketing provider so important in fighting fraud?

Ultimately, the card-issuing bank is the entity that should be recognizing transactions as uncharacteristic of the card-holder and/or know when a card has been stolen and stop approving transactions. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen. 

And while you have control over which payment methods you choose to accept at your haunt, you can’t be expected to call a card-issuing bank before every transaction to make sure that the information on file matches what the guest provided at checkout. You wouldn’t have time to run your haunt!

That’s where a ticketing partner’s fraud-prevention and fighting practices can help save you from fraud and disputed transactions. The right partner will take care of those details to help reduce fraud, and should also be your first line of defense against any disputed transactions that may occur after a purchase. 

Finally, they should also offer different levels of security depending on your haunt’s needs. If you know most of your guests and aren’t at a high risk of ticketing fraud, your customers shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to confirm their identity when purchasing tickets. On the other hand, if you’ve had trouble with disputed transactions in the past or know you’re in a high-fraud-risk area, you should be able to enable additional authentication – especially for online transactions. 

How HauntPay fights ticketing fraud for your haunted attractions

At HauntPay, we take payments fraud very seriously. In addition to our best-in-class security practices, we also strive to keep our clients as safe as possible from fraudulent transactions and potential disputes. 

While we can’t give away all of our secrets, here are a few of our practices:

1. Tracking (and risk-grading) of over 100 data-points, including previous activity on that card across our payment network. This includes IP addresses, device fingerprints, event information, location proximity, and much much more.

2. State of the art Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning systems to rank the risk level of every transaction in real-time. This practice alone prevents THOUSANDS of potentially fraudulent transactions every year!

3. Human (manual) reviews of large subsets of “risky” transactions. Yep – we also use good ol’ “Human Intelligence” (HI?) to review transactions that meet certain characteristics and to make manual judgement calls on risk levels.

4. Connection to several major databases of real-time fraud reports. There’s an 89% chance any card used on our system has been seen throughout the network of data we access, and we use this data to stop transactions from cards with behavior already deemed (or reported) as fraudulent.

In addition to those security practices, we give you the power to customize certain aspects of your ticketing to meet your individual needs.

• Set a ticket limit. Make your haunt unattractive to fraudsters by limiting the number of tickets that can be purchased in a single transaction. A ticket limit will prevent resellers and scammers from purchasing large numbers of tickets (sometimes with stolen card information) and reselling them at a markup.
• Set a transaction limit. By limiting the number of total transactions, not just the number of tickets, you can make sure someone isn’t trying to quickly run the same stolen card number many times in a row or use multiple stolen card numbers.
• For an extra layer of fraud protection, you have the option to turn on 3D Secure, an authentication program that requires customers to complete an additional verification step with the card issuer when checking out. Typically, the customer is directed to an authentication page on their bank’s website, and they enter a password associated with the card or a code sent to their phone. It’s an extra step for the user, but adds greater security to the transaction.

What happens if a transaction looks sketchy?

When we later deem a transaction that was previously approved as likely fraudulent we do a few things: 

1. We void the transaction and refund the money to the card used. The tickets are also deactivated and will not scan in properly.

2. We email you (the haunt owner) to let you know (including details of the transaction).

3. We email the purchaser to let them know their transaction was deemed likely fraudulent, reversed, and the tickets will no longer work. we do this just in case it actually was a legitimate transaction. We’ve had instances of people visiting a US event from China and actually buying their tickets in China… that looks a lot like fraud, but actually wasn’t (that customer was allowed by the event to purchase at-the-door). 

4. The first thing we do is to kill the tickets! These tickets won’t scan in. If you’re scanning tickets and you come across some that refuse to scan in, this is very likely the reason! Don’t let those customers in without making them pay at-the-door. If paying with a card, we’d suggest checking their ID to make sure their name matches that on the card as well. 

5. Any transaction we’ve reversed as likely fraudulent will also be denoted with “fraudulent” in your reporting. 

What if a customer disputes a charge?

We’ve got you covered! We automatically fight disputes for you. We have a ton of information about the transaction in question and we use all of that in fighting each dispute, so you don’t have to worry about gathering all the paperwork and records on your own. Learn more about how HauntPay helps with disputed charges here. 

Summary

We do everything we can to keep fraudsters away from your haunt. Online, we use a combination of state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning systems to rank the risk level of every transaction in real-time, in combination with human review to catch fraudulent transactions and stop them in their tracks. And we make it simple for you to set ticket & transaction limits that make sense for your haunt.

In person, there’s no better system for lightning-fast scanning to secure access to your haunt. We help you control employee access and accept secure payment methods like chipped cards and tap-to-pay. 

Did we mention we do all this at ZERO cost to your event?

Learn more about how HauntPay can work for your haunt by scheduling a demo today!