A growing online marketplace introduces a growing set of challenges for those who manage it As the number of SKUs available on the site increases so does the difficulty of keeping tabs on all those items making it easier for less reputable sellers to slide sketchy products under the radar Most marketplaces want to maintain a good reputation with buyers sellers and regulators by keeping their site clear of counterfeit merchandise and ensuring that health products dont get sold across borders where some of their ingredients may be controlled The real challenge is how to balance strong growth with strong oversight Past a certain point doing so manually just isnt going to work anymore Jewel Paymentech Founder and CEO Sean Lam said thats why the startup created a real-time API to detect counterfeits illegal pharmaceuticals and any other dodgy products that marketplaces may not want on their virtual shelves Lam explained that details on uploaded pictures pricing and product descriptions are streamed from the seller upload page to Jewels service where a processing unit combs through the data for red flags Then a real-time score is delivered to the marketplace manager showing the probability that the listed goods are counterfeit or contain controlled substances Lam said Jewel traces the origins of items to determine whether they are legitimate or counterfeit He explained that a Singaporean seller probably isnt manufacturing his own counterfeit goods he would have to buy his products from a supplier likely in a foreign country Jewel compares marketplace listings with images and data from known dodgy suppliers to weed out low-hanging counterfeit fruit On top of that he said the startups proprietary tech can fingerprint sellers to identify ones who are doing illicit business from outside the country This fingerprint lets Jewel recognize users who have been banned who may be trying to sneak back into the marketplace by opening a new account Its up to individual marketplace managers to decide what to do with the risk probability score said Lam They can opt to prevent the product from being uploaded or simply place it in a holding pattern for manual review Then once someone has taken a closer look at the suspicious product a decision can be made around whether to remove the product and or terminate the sellers account if the issue is recurring Lam said managers can remove unapproved products from the marketplace directly via the dashboard that Jewel Paymentech provides He said the ability to automate review processes like this is becoming more and more important in Asia particularly as eMarketplaces are growing rapidly in that region With tens of thousands of SKUs being uploaded to marketplaces daily recruitment cant keep up with the demand for enough human capital to power manual risk assessment automation counterfeit goods e-commerce jewel paymentech marketplaces News Payment Methods shopping SKUs startup check-in startups