How AstroPay teamed up with Telesign to combat fake account creation

About AstroPay

AstroPay is a leading global payments platform founded with the mission to provide a hassle-free and seamless payment experience to its customers. AstroPay has emerged as the go-to digital wallet for individuals and businesses around the world. The platform offers a range of payment options that include instant payments, e-wallets, bank transfers, and over 200+ local payment methods.

AstroPay’s innovative technology enables users to pay for goods and services in their local currency, making transactions faster and more convenient. With AstroPay, customers can say goodbye to hidden fees and hello to transparent and straightforward payment options.

The challenge

E-commerce sales have taken off worldwide and are expected to reach around $6.3 trillion in 2023. As the number of online transactions continues to grow, so does the risk for fraud and fake accounts. It’s estimated that 1 in 4 new account sign-ups are fake.

AstroPay now boasts more than 9 million users, prompting the digital wallet platform to seek out an advanced solution to collect user data, combat fake account creation, and limit promotion abuse without causing unnecessary friction. And with users across 150 countries, AstroPay needed a trustworthy global SMS provider to improve their SMS reliability and delivery rates.

Balancing security with a seamless digital experience during onboarding

AstroPay recognized that in a world where customers expect instant gratification, a slow and complicated onboarding process can lead to losing potential customers, as studies show that nearly 74% of them would switch to a solution with a less complicated onboarding process. As more consumers shift towards online channels, it is essential for businesses to provide a seamless digital customer experience, which begins with onboarding. However, with new accounts posing the most risk, accounting for 48% of fraud cases that are less than a day old, AstroPay was challenged with finding a balance between a smooth onboarding process and mitigating fraud.

Like many growing businesses, Astropay was concerned with how best to fight new account fraud. Every day, millions of new accounts are successfully created by bots, synthetic identities, spammers, and fake and fraudulent users. Yet, identifying fake users and blocking fraudulent activities on your platform isn’t always easy. AstroPay needed a way to identify risky users at sign-up to stop the creation of fake accounts and promotion abuse. They needed an onboarding workflow that wouldn’t disrupt the sign-up process for legitimate users. The right onboarding workflow could mean the difference between gaining a lifetime customer and losing one to customer churn.

The solution

Astropay selected Telesign, because it enabled them to fight new account fraud, detect users with online phone numbers and multiple accounts, and increase their SMS deliverability rate—all while ensuring their users had a safe, secure, and seamless onboarding experience.

AstroPay chose Telesign because they needed a robust set of digital tools to keep up with evolving fraudsters who leverage onboarding loopholes to drain company profits. AstroPay also needed a global SMS supplier that they could confidently rely on to send one-time passcodes (OTPs), notifications, and alerts to their customers and Telesign fit the bill.

The Telesign Trust Engine

By adding Telesign’s Trust Engine to their tech stack, AstroPay was able to protect their platform from repeated promotion abuse and simplify their verification process.

Intelligence API

Using Telesign’s Intelligence API at the onset of every new user signup allows AstroPay to collect invaluable data to access user insights and determine risk level. By simply collecting a phone number, AstroPay is able to plug into Telesign’s advanced machine-learning algorithms to evaluate phone data attributes and identify potential red flags associated with every user.

Telesign’s Intelligence API runs a real-time risk assessment leveraging Telesign’s Identity API to check phone type and carrier data. Intelligence then returns a risk score, complete with detailed reason codes and recommendations for AstroPay to either block, flag, or allow a user onto their platform in milliseconds. Once a user has been deemed trustworthy, AstroPay uses Telesign’s SMS API to send an OTP to authenticate legitimate new users.

SMS API

AstroPay can now streamline its messaging system and save costs, thanks to Telesign’s exceptional messaging delivery rates. By integrating the SMS API into their tech stack, AstroPay can inform users about incoming deposits or money transfers in real-time, keeping them up to date with their financial transactions.

Telesign’s global SMS API reaches customers in over 230 countries. It deploys a waterfall approach to sending messages, including dynamic routing to ensure every message is delivered. If any message fails, it’s instantly redirected to a new carrier route or falls back to a different channel. This translates to greater reach, efficiency and reliability for Astropay.

Results

When it comes to fraud prevention, a one size fits all approach is sure to fail. AstroPay leans on Telesign to provide a layered approach to fighting fraud before it happens. By leveraging Telesign’s Trust Engine, AstroPay is able to adapt a simplified user verification process to provide their customers with a secure and low friction user experience.

Layered behind the AstroPay sign-up form, Telesign’s Trust Engine helps the company assess risks, verify identity, and authenticate every new user that entered their platform.

AstroPay works with Telesign to combat fake account creation, promotion abuse, and improve SMS deliverability. By using Telesign, AstroPay now provides comprehensive account protection for their users around the world, throughout their journey.