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Helping SA retailers combat fraud

As South African retailers continue their recovery after two years of varying lockdown levels while navigating fresh headwinds in the form of increased interest rates and record petrol prices, retail shrinkage continues to present a real and growing threat to their bottom line. In an effort to address retail fraud, made worse by increasing digitisation and cybercrime, retail software specialist redPanda Software has partnered with IntelliQ to bring cutting-edge fraud analytics to more retailers.

Retail shrinkage, or loss of inventory, can be attributed to many factors such as employee theft, shoplifting, administrative error, vendor fraud, cybercrime, damage and cashier error. The result means a loss of profits for retail businesses.

With a deep understanding of the retail environment, redPanda Software understands that retail shrinkage is a persistent problem with real implications for the bottom line. It’s not just a South African issue.

In 2020, the National Security Survey, which is conducted among US retailers, found that shrinkage was at an all-time high, accounting for 1,62% of retailers' bottom line and costing the industry $61,7 billion. It was also found that seven in 10 businesses calculate a shrink rate that exceeds 1%.

The 2021 survey found that loss prevention and asset protection professionals have taken steps to address the shifting landscape, which as anyone in South Africa would attest to, involves a noticeable spike in cybercrime.

Online crime syndicates are well-aware that as retailers increasingly digitise their businesses and move to omnichannel strategies to improve their engagement with customers, there is an exponentially increased attack surface, such as the 'buy online, pick up in store' functionality, among others. This danger extends to threats inside a business, such as rogue employees or systems that need addressing.

Gerhard Nortje, redPanda Software managing director, says: “As a leader in retail software solutions, we are constantly looking at ways we can enhance our offerings to our existing and growing client base, whether it be bespoke solutions built by our highly-qualified teams, or through world-class partnerships such as the one with IntelliQ. This partnership enables us to provide retailers with many years’ experience in shrinkage reduction through the deployment of the IntelliQ fraud analytics solution.”

The IntelliQ Forensic Analysis solution provides retailers with a sophisticated fraud analytics platform for identifying invisible employee dishonesty at the point of sale, as well as procedural non-compliance and external fraud incidents including ecommerce and omnichannel.

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