CastleCops® - New York, Nigeria Named 'Riskiest Areas for eCommerce'

New York Takes Domestic 'Honors', Nigeria Worst Outside U.S.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Dec. 9 -- In a survey undertaken by CyberSource Corporation (Nasdaq: CYBS), eCommerce merchants named New York the riskiest North American metro area for eCommerce. Nigeria was chosen as riskiest country. By "riskiest", merchants mean that orders from these areas are most likely to be fraudulent (i.e., made with stolen credit cards or with improperly obtained credit card information).

"Highest risk" areas for eCommerce:

U.S./Canadian cities
NYC: 26% of mentions
Miami: 10%
Los Angeles 9%
Chicago, Detroit 3%
SF Bay Area 2%

Countries
Nigeria 31% of mentions
Indonesia 8%
Russia 6%
China 5%
UK, Afghanistan 4%

Impact on named cities/countries
Residents of cities like New York, Miami and other cited centers of fraud may ultimately pay a price for their area's reputation. Online merchants can require purchasers in certain "hot zones" to take more elaborate steps for identification, such as asking the purchaser to make a telephone call to verify the order. Some merchants routinely flag orders from high fraud areas for manual (therefore slower) processing. In extreme cases, such as small merchants struggling to get orders out by the holidays, the order could even be rejected.
"Few merchants will publicly discuss this, but it's no secret that some areas of the country carry tarnished reputations due to a high incidence of eCommerce fraud," says Doug Schwegman, CyberSource director of market intelligence. "It's not fair, but if merchants have gotten routinely burned by orders from one zip code, it's understandable that they will just take longer, harder looks at orders from that location. Many merchants resist overseas demand for the same reason -- orders from outside the U.S. and Canada are three times more likely to be fraudulent, according to our research."

Trans-shippers may be the cause
One reason for the concentration of electronic fraud in distinct areas of the country may be the availability of trans-shippers in those regions. "Fraudsters located in Nigeria, Indonesia or some parts of Eastern Europe now know their orders are going to be denied," according to Schwegman. "There is just too much history of fraud from those parts of the world. So they order to a domestic address where someone will accept the package and forward it to the real location abroad."

Question/Survey details
The city and country questions were part of a larger survey, the Sixth Annual CyberSource Fraud Survey, commissioned by CyberSource Corporation and undertaken by Mindwave Research. The survey was fielded September 17 through October 1, 2004 and yielded 348 qualified and complete responses. The sample was drawn from a database of companies involved in electronic commerce activities. Incentive to respondents was a summary of the research findings. To obtain a copy of the survey results -- for journalists: call or email Bruce Frymire (650-965-6042, bfrymire@cybersource.com). For all others: please visit http://www.cybersource.com/fraudreport/ .

Specific questions referred to in this news release were as follows:
1. "From your experience, what single major U.S. or Canadian metropolitan area poses the highest risk of online fraud? (348 total responses -- no Canadian cities were cited).

2. "From your experience, which single country outside of the U.S. and Canada poses the highest risk of online fraud? (Only merchants accepting international orders were asked this question -- 201 total responses).

About CyberSource
CyberSource Corporation is a leading provider of electronic payment and risk management solutions. CyberSource solutions enable electronic payment processing for Web, call center/IVR, and POS environments and manage fraud risk associated with card-not-present transactions. CyberSource Professional Services designs, integrates, and optimizes enterprise-wide commerce transaction systems. Over 5,000 businesses use CyberSource solutions, including half of the Dow Jones Industrial companies. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and has sales and service offices in Japan, the United Kingdom, and other locations in the United States. For more information, please visit CyberSource's web site at http://www.cybersource.com or email info@cybersource.com.

NOTE: CyberSource is a registered trademark in the U.S. and other countries. All other brands and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.


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