American telecom carrier AT&T on Thursday said it would expand its Location Information Services portfolio.
The new service will be a new capability to its existing Location Information Services portfolio which already assists businesses to make financial and mobile transactions safer for AT&T mobile subscribers.
AT&T, which is expanding the new service to more than 150 countries, said its new service will enable companies to confirm the location of participating customers who opt-in to protection against fraud when they travel internationally.
The company will begin a pilot this summer, and expects to deploy the service to enterprise customers later this year.
The main challenge in controlling international fraud, which grew by 10.2 percent in 2013 to reach $12.42 billion, was verification of customer identity.
AT&T said the new Location Information Services capability, which is enabled through an application program interface (API), can proactively notify companies when their customers who opt-in for the service arrive in a new country.
For instance, a credit card company could confirm its customer has traveled to a new country as soon as she lands and turns on her mobile device. The capability can help credit card companies make more informed decisions, such as whether to approve or decline purchases in an international country, said AT&T.
The new Location Information Services capability allows businesses to access AT&T network data to locate a participating user’s device to authenticate that users’ location, helping to protect against potential fraud.