In an effort to combat fraud, PaypPal has purchased the Israeli software firm Fraud Sciences. At a time when the sheer volume of ecommerce customers is growing, fraud is growing as well. More automated fraud detection and management systems will be needed to combat this growth. Ecommerce Times reports on the acquisition of Fraud Sciences by PayPal, a company owned by eBay:

Integrating Fraud Sciences’ risk tools with PayPal’s sophisticated fraud management system should allow us to be even more effective in protecting eBay and PayPal’s hundreds of millions of customers around the world,” said Scott Thompson, president of PayPal.

The idea is to fix some of eBay’s problems with fraudulent users, while at the same time boosting PayPal’s appeal as a third-party payment service. Most PayPal users still use it mainly for eBay purchases, and PayPal has been trying to expand beyond that designation to service non-eBay, non-auction ecommerce Web sites.

This is especially important in terms of international ecommerce. An increasing number of ecommerce purchases are made overseas, and international fraud is more than two times as likely as domestic fraud when it comes to online shopping.