Combatting fraud in till slip competitions

A till slip competition can lift sales. Without a real check it can also become an expensive way to pay the wrong people. In South Africa, fraud in promotions, including till slip competitions, costs brands a serious amount of money every year.

What it costs

Industry reports put the loss at about R1.5 billion a year. The usual routes are a receipt that was never printed by a till, the same receipt sent again under another name, and a photo edited so the products or the total look right.

The three usual tricks

• Counterfeit receipts that look real enough to enter without buying.
• The same receipt, submitted again, hoping for a second reward.
• A digital edit of the products, the date or the amount.

How the check responds

• Image recognition looks for the inconsistencies that give a fake or an edited slip away.
• The model learns the patterns of bad entries from what it has already seen, and keeps adapting.
• Validation happens as the photo arrives, so the window for a second try is short. An unclear photo is flagged. It is not a pass.
• Each slip is tracked, so one receipt cannot be a stack of entries. Not every altered image is found, which is why a suspicious one is held.
• You can see what was attempted, and how often, and tighten the next campaign.

One FMCG brand

A leading South African FMCG brand had lost more than R500,000 on a previous competition to counterfeit receipts and duplicates. After the check was in place, fraudulent entries fell by 95%. The prize budget stopped leaking, and the campaign could be defended. The shopper-facing version of this is the hidden danger of an invalid entry.

To plan one, email andrew@brazenlabs.co.za. The short version of how these campaigns work is in till slip campaigns explained.