Screen scraping is a technology by which a customer provides its banking app login credentials to a third-party provider (TTP). The TTP then sends a software robot to the bank’s app or website to log in on behalf of the user and access data.
“The way consumers traditionally connect to their bank accounts is facilitated through screen scraping, where providers require internet banking login information,” explained Joe Pettersson, Chief Technology Officer at Banked.
One safer alternative to screen scraping is APIs, which let two systems work together. Here are the three benefits of using API:
Easier for developers
APIs come with inbuilt documentation, which helps developers code between two systems with a common language. So, they don’t have to learn the details of a full fraud prevention engine’s code, they only need to look at the documentation to understand exactly how quickly they can access certain functions. Once again, this saves time and effort for the whole IT team and helps in making the fraud system more cost-effective.
Good for Scaling
Regardless of how efficient a person is, there’s simply no way to review all the user data manually. This is where APIs play an important role by offering fast queries and responses for hundreds of thousands of user logins, transactions, or signups.
Automates everything
Because APIs are linked to web apps, there’s no need to regularly tweak them or wait for IT updates. All the fixes and improvements are made from the server side, so individuals can focus on their business instead. It’s not only cheaper in terms of IT resources, but also much more efficient and faster.
Conclusion
To mitigate fraud risk, propagating knowledge and awareness of new payment technologies, channels, and products, and the risks involved — to both customers and employees — is a crucial part of a fraud prevention strategy. Embedding the fraud management process into overall customer engagement and experience should be the first step forward.
