Oak Road Motor Factors

How Oak Road Motor Factors Shut Down Card Fraud and Freed Up Their Sales Team

Taking card details over the phone is convenient, until it is not.

For a motor factor handling a steady flow of trade and retail orders, an unprotected phone payment is an open door to fraud, and a constant drain on the sales team.

After being caught out by exactly that, Oak Road Motor Factors closed the door for good. Here is how Pay by Link replaced risky phone payments with secure ones, freed the sales team from the handset, and brought the debtor list down along the way.

About Oak Road Motor Factors

Oak Road Motor Factors is an established motor factor that has supplied quality car parts and accessories for 40 years.

Open to both trade and the public, it runs two branches, its original site in Redcar alongside a larger branch in Middlesbrough.

Like most factors, Oak Road takes payment in several ways: card in the branches, cheques, account settlement and, increasingly, remote payments for cash-on-delivery jobs and month-end statement balances.

The Challenge: Phone Payments Without Protection

Sarah Iley, Managing Director, came to Klipboard Money after the business had experienced card fraud through phone payments.

Oak Road had been taking card payments over the phone on a NatWest card terminal, and although staff asked customers for their postcode and house number as verification, the system would still authorise a transaction even when those details did not match.

That gap was exploited. Two individuals used a series of stolen cards to phone in, pay for goods and then collect them from the branch; chargebacks followed and the stock was gone.

Sarah looked at bolting extra security onto the existing terminal but felt it would not be enough. She needed something where the protection could not simply be worked around.

On top of the risk, the arrangement tied up staff: account customers, cash-on-delivery jobs and special orders all meant the sales team keying card details over the phone while other customers waited in store.

The Turning Point: Secure Payment by Link

Oak Road moved to Klipboard Money and switched its remote payments to Pay by Link, and the change was decisive.

Because the card authentication step now happens on the customer’s own device, there is no way to bypass it, so the team stopped taking card payments over the phone completely. Everything goes through a link, and the chargeback exposure that let the fraud through has been designed out.

The benefits have rippled out from there.

Statement Pay by Links sent at month-end have made a visible difference to how quickly account customers pay; debtors have clearly reduced, and as Sarah put it, the links are the only thing that has changed.

Smaller account holders who once had to call the branch during opening hours can now click and pay from home whenever suits them. And with links generated straight from the point-of-sale and payment screens, what used to be a phone call is now a few clicks.

Some of the longer-serving staff were unsure at first, but it has quickly become second nature, and the time saved goes straight back into serving customers face to face.

The concept of KlipboardMoney is brilliant. Pay by link has taken the risk out of payments, reduced ourdebtors, helped us get paid quicker, and saved our time, instead of takingpayments over the phone, it’s now just a few clicks to get the job done.”
— Sarah Iley, Managing Director, Oak Road Motor Factors.

The Results

• Phone-payment fraud designed out with built-in 3D Secure
• Phone card payments stopped entirely, no more chargebacks
• Debtor list clearly reduced since go-live
• Statement links let customers settle in one click at month-end
• Sales team freed from taking card details by phone
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What’s next

Adoption of the statement links is growing month on month as more account customers settle the moment their statement arrives.

With both branches on one connected system, Oak Road plans to widen its use of Pay by Link further as it continues to move customers toward the quicker, more secure way to pay.

About Klipboard Money

Klipboard Money is an integrated payments solution that connects directly into your existing Klipboard business management software. Payments are reconciled automatically into one system without manual entry. Built for distributive trades, garages and rental companies, Klipboard Money helps businesses cut down the hidden cost of payments by helping them to get paid faster, cut manual admin and protect against loss from fraud and errors.

Book a demo or find out more at https://www.klipboard.com/solutions/payment/klipboard-money