SOFIAH NICHOLE SALIVIO

News Editor

Ecommpay has won the 2026 Retail Systems Award for Fraud Prevention Solution of the Year, recognising the payments company’s work in fraud prevention.

The Retail Systems Awards celebrate achievement across the retail sector, with the latest winners announced at a gala dinner in London.

The award reflects Ecommpay’s focus on merchant security while maintaining transaction conversion rates. Central to that approach is its in-house Risk Control System, or RCS, which includes a Graph Analysis tool designed to identify fraud trends and detect linked fraudulent activity rather than isolated incidents.

Founded in 2012 and based in London, Ecommpay operates as a payment service provider, offering acquiring, payment processing and orchestration through a single application programming interface. It also supports more than 100 payment methods and has built functions such as open banking, recurring billing and direct debits into its platform.

Fraud focus

Fraud prevention remains a key area of spending and scrutiny for merchants and payments providers as online commerce grows and criminal methods become more networked. Systems that can identify connections between separate fraud attempts have become increasingly important as retailers seek to reduce losses without adding friction at checkout.

Ecommpay says its Graph Analysis function tracks patterns across multiple related operations, helping merchants stop broader fraud schemes while avoiding unnecessary disruption for legitimate customers.

Willem Wellinghoff, UK Chair, Ecommpay, commented on the award and the company’s recent work on payments and risk controls.

“Our commitment to innovation and ongoing development has brought Ecommpay clients and their customers a more streamlined experience in the past 12 months. Critically, while enhancing the payments services we offer, we have also stayed focused on applying industry-leading fraud prevention to our processes to give merchants confidence. We are, therefore, delighted to receive recognition for this commitment at the Retail Systems Awards,” said Willem Wellinghoff, UK Chair, Ecommpay.

Market position

Ecommpay describes itself as a full-stack provider because it combines payment products with fraud tools built in-house. This structure allows merchants to access payment options, operational functions and fraud controls within the same system rather than relying on a mix of separate third-party products.

The business is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority under the Payment Services Regulations 2017 to provide payment services in the UK. It is also a principal member of Mastercard and Visa, and its platform has Level 1 PCI DSS certification.

The Retail Systems Awards are now in their 21st year and focus on technology and service providers working with retailers. Ecommpay’s win places it among suppliers being recognised for tackling a persistent issue for online merchants: how to block fraud while keeping the payment journey simple for genuine customers.

Ecommpay says its anti-fraud measures are being continuously improved to protect merchants without compromising conversion rates.

The move, in partnership with insurance specialist Hood Group, is part of the supermarket’s strategy to broaden its financial services offering by leveraging its existing customer base and More Card loyalty programme.

Customers who take out a pet insurance policy through Morrisons will earn 20,000 More Points, equivalent to four Morrisons Fivers to spend in-store or online.

Those opting for travel insurance will receive a 10 per cent discount.

Morrisons shoppers can get free bonus loyalty points

A Morrisons spokesperson said: “These new services are designed to make life a little easier by offering simple, good-value options in areas that really matter to our customers.”

The supermarket joins Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s in expanding its brand and loyalty schemes beyond groceries into areas such as insurance, banking and telecommunications.

Morrisons Pet Insurance offers three tiers of lifetime cover with annual veterinary fee limits of £2,500, £5,000 or £10,000.

Customers also get access to a 24/7 UK-based Pet Health Assist line, staffed by qualified vets and nurses.

Travel insurance is available in three levels of cover and includes gadget protection as standard for direct customers.

Pet insurance policies are underwritten by Burns & Wilcox Global Solutions Limited on behalf of Accredited Insurance (UK) Limited.

Travel insurance is underwritten by AXA.

The launch has been welcomed by Hood Group, which developed and powers the digital insurance platform behind the new products.

Bruce Reid, commercial director at Hood Group, said: “Absolutely delighted to see this latest affinity partnership come to life with Morrisons.

“It’s been a genuine pleasure collaborating on the launch of Pet and Travel Insurance for their customers – an initiative that truly reflects their ambition and forward thinking.”

He said: “Morrisons have embraced the opportunity they can unlock within their estate, recognising the meaningful value they can bring to their shoppers by offering high-quality pet and travel insurance products.”

He described the launch as “a brilliant collective effort” involving teams from Morrisons, Hood Group and their insurance partners.

Redgate has published research showing that 77% of organisations scaling AI in database management do not use formal data governance or quality frameworks. The findings point to a widening gap between AI adoption and operational controls.

Use of AI for database management among enterprises rose to 44% from 15% a year earlier, according to the database software company. The report drew on responses from 2,150 IT professionals globally and examined how companies are managing database estates as AI spending increases.

The study found that 44% of organisations spent more than USD $100,000 on database AI over the past year. Nearly a quarter of large enterprises spent more than USD $1 million, suggesting database-related AI projects are moving beyond small-scale trials in many large businesses.

At the same time, only 23% of firms said they had formal data governance or quality frameworks in place for these environments. That means most organisations are expanding AI use in databases without structured controls over data quality, governance and change management.

Redgate’s figures also suggest many companies are accepting greater exposure as they push for faster results. The report found that 58% of surveyed organisations explicitly accept higher data security risks in exchange for efficiency gains.

That pressure is playing out across increasingly complex estates. More than a third of enterprises surveyed, or 36%, said they manage four or more database platforms, indicating that many teams are working across fragmented systems rather than a single standardised environment.

Operational practices also remain heavily manual in many organisations. The report found that 39% still rely on manual methods to test and deploy database changes, suggesting many businesses have not yet automated key parts of database operations even as they expand AI use.

Control gap

The data points to a contradiction at the heart of many AI programmes. Businesses are committing larger budgets and reporting benefits from adoption, but governance, security and deployment processes are not keeping pace with the speed of roll-out.

Almost all respondents, 99%, reported operational benefits from AI in database management. The most common gains were task automation, cited by 63%, and performance optimisation, cited by 60%.

Those returns help explain why companies continue to expand deployments despite unresolved risks. For IT teams under pressure to streamline operations and reduce the burden of managing sprawling data estates, AI tools are becoming part of day-to-day database administration rather than an experimental addition.

Yet the report suggests weak governance could undermine those gains, especially where organisations are dealing with large volumes of data across multiple platforms. The combination of fragmented systems, manual deployment processes and looser security trade-offs may increase the likelihood of errors that are harder to trace and fix.

Kellyn Gorman, engineer and advocate at Redgate, addressed that tension in the report findings. “AI didn’t create fragile operational foundations, but it has exposed and amplified organizational pitfalls at a speed and scale that is impossible to ignore,” Gorman said.

She added: “The hard truth is that AI without strong foundations doesn’t just fail slower, it fails faster, and in ways much harder to debug, fix and explain to the business. The solution isn’t to slow down delivery, but to stop pretending the gaps aren’t there while we accelerate toward them.”

Rising spend

The findings come as businesses across sectors look for practical uses of AI in infrastructure, software development and IT operations. Database management has emerged as one area where companies expect AI to help automate repetitive work, improve performance monitoring and support more efficient administration of growing data estates.

But Redgate’s figures indicate that financial commitment to these tools is outpacing the organisational changes needed to support them. A company can spend heavily on AI software and still lack the controls required to manage underlying data quality, access and deployment discipline.

That issue matters because database environments sit close to core business systems. Problems in governance or testing can affect not only internal workflows but also customer-facing services, reporting and compliance processes, particularly in organisations running a mix of legacy and modern platforms.

The report places database AI adoption within a broader shift in enterprise technology management, where teams are expected to move faster while handling more complexity. In that environment, manual processes and fragmented controls can persist even as budgets rise and adoption widens.

For many organisations, the challenge is no longer whether to use AI in database management, but whether supporting processes are mature enough to handle the pace of change. Redgate’s research suggests that for most, the answer is still no: only 23% are using formal governance or quality frameworks while adoption has climbed to 44%.