Chargeback Gurus' Audio Blog

A brief history of brick-and-mortar shopping would reveal a trend of less and less contact between the customer and the cashier over time. First there was cash, then came payment cards, and now contactless payments through digital wallets are becoming increasingly common. While you’re probably still doing most of your in-person shopping with a credit or debit card, a future where contactless payment is the norm is getting closer every day. Recently, twenty-nine countries in Europe and Asia changed their regulations to allow for higher contactless payment limits. Is this good news for tech-savvy merchants, or are there potential drawbacks to watch out for?The timing couldn’t be more ripe for an expansion of contactless payment schemes. The COVID-19 pandemic changed customer behavior in many ways, including many customers trying to limit how often they touched things other people have touched. While some things have gone back to normal, many will want to keep using contactless payment methods now that they've discovered the convenience of not having to insert a card and wait a few seconds for each transaction.Full Text:https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/contactless-payment-limits-increase©Chargeback Gurus 2021Production: Emily WoodwardNarration: Phil Claffey

Many merchants, businesses, and consumers rely on credit and debit cards for daily transactions. But with the rising popularity of cards comes the increased risk of cases of fraud, which could spell disaster for merchants when chargeback ratios rise and profits plummet. Hence, security measures are put in place to protect all the parties concerned. The initial string of numbers on your card make up the Bank Identification Number (BIN), which can be used to identify the card’s issuing bank or institution. What do these numbers mean and what role do they play in business transactions? How do these numbers help merchants?Here’s what you need to know about Bank Identification Numbers and their uses.Full Text:https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/bank-identification-number©Chargeback Gurus 2021Production: Emily WoodwardNarration: Sarah Rife

When the lawmakers who wrote the Fair Credit Billing Act of 1974 created the legal mandate for chargebacks, they were thinking about protecting consumers from credit card thieves and dishonest merchants. They probably weren’t anticipating the way the chargeback process itself could become an instrument of fraud.The truth is that credit card disputes exist to help consumers who are victims of fraud. When consumers leverage that system to take advantage of merchants, however, they are committing what's called credit card dispute fraud.What is credit card dispute fraud? It is when cardholders claim that legitimate transactions were fraudulent in order to claim free goods and services. When consumers dispute credit card transactions based on false claims, they’re committing fraud—and merchants are the victims. Fraudulent chargebacks are extremely costly to merchants, whether they’re accepting the loss to their revenue or taking the time to fight them. What can merchants do to protect themselves from credit card dispute fraud?Full Text:https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/credit-card-dispute-fraud-prevention©Chargeback Gurus 2021Production: Emily WoodwardNarration: Sarah Rife

PayPal has come a long way since the days when it first arrived on the eCommerce scene, back when eBay buyers were still mailing paper checks to sellers. Today, they offer a wide range of merchant services, including functioning as a payment processor and an acquirer.Familiarity and convenience are what draw many merchants to PayPal, but one of its biggest advantages is the PayPal Resolution Center, which is designed to resolve merchant disputes without involving the customer’s issuing bank. In other words, it helps merchants avoid chargebacks. How can merchants make best use of the PayPal Resolution Center to keep their customers happy and protect their revenue?Full Text:https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/paypal-resolution-center©Chargeback Gurus 2021Production: Emily WoodwardNarration: Sarah Rife

In the early days of ecommerce, returning a product you’d purchased online was a hassle. All the convenience of shopping from your computer seemed to evaporate when you’d have to repackage a product and wait in line at the post office to send it back.Reusable boxes, pre-printed shipping labels, and other conveniences have taken a lot of the sting out of returning an online purchase, but some merchants find easy returns to be a double-edged sword. How can merchants create return policies that keep customers happy without putting too much of their revenue at risk?Full Text:https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/customer-return-policy©Chargeback Gurus 2021Production: Emily WoodwardNarration: Phil Claffey

The last chance a merchant has to stop a chargeback from happening is when the cardholder is on the phone with their bank asking for one. Unfortunately, the merchant is rarely involved in these conversations. While the bank may try to guide cardholders toward investigating an unfamiliar transaction on their end, or resolving a product complaint directly with the merchant, they don’t always have enough information to prevent every invalid chargeback.Visa hopes to address this problem with Order Insight, a collaboration tool from Verifi. Can merchants make effective use of Order Insight to provide issuers with purchase details in time to stop chargebacks?Full Text:https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/order-insight©Chargeback Gurus 2021Production: Emily WoodwardNarration: Sarah Rife

When we discuss chargebacks, there’s often an implicit assumption that we’re talking about Visa and MasterCard transactions. These two card networks facilitate the vast majority of credit and debit card purchases in the United States, and their policies and procedures tend to be similar where chargebacks are concerned. When you’re dealing with chargebacks from other card networks, you might find yourself in unfamiliar territory. The way American Express handles disputes and chargebacks is different in several key ways, which can trip up merchants who aren’t used to it. What do merchants need to know about navigating the American Express chargeback process?Because they carry higher interchange fees than Visa or MasterCard transactions, not every merchant accepts American Express cards. However, they are popular with many consumers, and some merchants may find that accepting them leads to better customer experiences and increased sales.If you do accept American Express cards—or if you’re considering it—it’s important to learn how their dispute process works and where American Express chargebacks will fit into your overall strategy of preventing and fighting chargebacks.Full Text:https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/american-express-chargeback©Chargeback Gurus 2021Production: Emily WoodwardNarration: Sarah Rife

Credit cards make it incredibly easy to make payments at online and in-person retailers, but when it comes to informal transactions between friends and family, they’re a non-starter. With fewer people making a habit of carrying cash around, peer-to-peer payment apps like Venmo have stepped in to make it easy to make small electronic payments to individuals.As Venmo’s popularity grows, some merchants are starting to accept it as a form of payment, but even Venmo transactions can turn into chargebacks. Before leaping into the brave new world of P2P payments, what do merchants need to know about Venmo chargebacks?Since its debut in 2009 as an app designed to facilitate bill-splitting and IOU payments between acquaintances, Venmo’s user base has grown to exceed 40 million people, making it one of the most popular and widely-used P2P payment platforms. Venmo is especially popular among younger demographics, so many merchants who target those age groups see a clear benefit to including Venmo as one of the payment options they accept.Full Text:https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/venmo-chargebacks©Chargeback Gurus 2021Production: Emily WoodwardNarration: Phil Claffey

The coronavirus pandemic has had a singular influence over consumer shopping habits this year, with shutdown orders and safety concerns forcing many brick-and-mortar retailers to operate at reduced capacity or close their doors entirely. Ecommerce merchants have had to step up to meet a massive upswell in in demand, and with the holiday season upon us, the biggest surge may be about to hit.This wave of new customers could mean big profits for online merchants—as long as their fraud screening tools don’t falsely flag them. What can merchants do to make sure that anti-fraud algorithms don’t turn away customers new to ecommerce shopping?Fraud is a pernicious problem that carries many negative consequences for its victims, but the opposite problem—good customers mistakenly identified as fraudsters—can have financial consequences for merchants that are just as serious. Some analysts estimate that the revenue losses from false declines exceed that of fraud by a factor of 70. A false decline won’t lead to a downstream problem like chargebacks, but it can have a serious negative impact on your business.Full Text:https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/holiday-false-declines©Chargeback Gurus 2021Production: Emily WoodwardNarration: Sarah Rife

As an ever-greater share of consumer purchasing shifts to the world of eCommerce, people are using their credit and debit cards more than ever before. It’s easy for them to lose track of how many card purchases they’ve made, where they made them, and what they were for.Billing statements provide an opportunity for cardholders to review their transactions, and when they see one that they don’t recall making, that may be a sign of fraud—or it may just be that the merchant description attached to the card is vague or confusing. How can merchants create recognizable billing descriptors that won’t get mistakenly reported as fraud?Full Text:https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/merchant-descriptor©Chargeback Gurus 2021Production: Emily WoodwardNarration: Sarah Rife

Phone numbers have become a common way to verify your identity online. We’re in an era where many of us view our smartphones as practically extensions of ourselves, so it stands to reason that sending a text message to a personal phone number is a good way to perform two-factor authentication or validate a login from an unfamiliar device.This method is secure and effective—unless a fraudster manages to hijack your phone number with a SIM card swap. It’s not the easiest scam to pull off, but when it succeeds, what can victims do to mitigate the damage and protect their online accounts?Many of the apps and sites that store our most valuable personal data—like our social media, email, and online banking—use our phone numbers to make sure we are who we say we are when we’re trying to access or make changes to our accounts. After all, most of us always have our phones nearby, and replace them immediately when they’re lost or broken.Full Text:https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/sim-swap-fraud©Chargeback Gurus 2021Production: Emily WoodwardNarration: Sarah Rife

The most important step when processing a credit card transaction is getting an authorization from the card issuer. This provides the confirmation that the customer’s identity has been verified to the best extent possible, and that the card is valid and has sufficient funds to cover the purchase.A card transaction that hasn’t been authorized is like a great big bullseye target for chargebacks. However, interpreting the authorization codes that the issuer sends back can be confusing. What do the various codes sent back in authorization response messages mean, and how can merchants use them to make safer decisions when processing transactions?Full Text:https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/credit-card-response-codes©Chargeback Gurus 2021Production: Emily WoodwardNarration: Phil Claffey

In this hyperconnected digital world we’re living in, customers can come at you from any direction, and smart merchants are learning to meet their customers where they’re at—no matter where that might be. The name for this approach of marketing and selling across multiple platforms is the omnichannel, because it encompasses every possible vector through which merchants might engage their customers.Unfortunately, any conduit for customers will also bring fraudsters, and the omnichannel presents them with multiple opportunities and vulnerabilities to exploit. How can merchants safely take advantage of omnichannel marketing without exposing themselves to excessive fraud and chargebacks?Full Text:https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/omnichannel-payments©Chargeback Gurus 2021Production: Emily WoodwardNarration: Phil Claffey

To many American consumers, it may feel like QR codes had their moment a few years ago, but they never really went away—and with contactless payments becoming a big priority in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, they’re starting to make a comeback.QR codes offer an easily accessible way to receive contact-free payments without investing in the near-field communications hardware required by many digital wallet platforms, but greater accessibility sometimes means a greater risk of fraud. How are fraudsters exploiting QR codes to steal money, payment card credentials, and sensitive personal data?QR (Quick Response) codes were invented in 1994 to track materials in automobile factories, but the dawn of the smartphone helped them take off in a big way for the average person. While they were prevalent for a time, they never quite found their essential purpose—not in the United States, anyway, where they typically served as shortcuts to load a URL or contact information on your phone. In China and Southeast Asia, however, they found widespread use as a means to facilitate digital payments.Full Text:https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/qr-code-payments©Chargeback Gurus 2021Production: Emily WoodwardNarration: Phil Claffey

At a glance, processing a credit card payment couldn’t seem more straightforward. The card goes in the slot, the terminal does some behind-the-scenes communication with the credit card mothership, the customer scribbles a rough approximation of their signature on the screen, and presto—a transaction has occurred.For the layperson, this explanation may be sufficient, but merchants need a better understanding of the technical details of credit card processing in order to protect themselves from fraud and chargebacks. What do merchants need to know about how credit card processing works, and how can this inform the best practices for handling transactions?Full Text:https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/credit-card-processing©Chargeback Gurus 2021Production: Emily WoodwardNarration: Phil Claffey

Every merchant knows how their transaction process is supposed to work. The customer gives you money, and you give them your goods or services in return. It’s never ideal when merchants have to give money back to the customer, but of course it happens frequently and is sometimes unavoidable.When you’re dealing with payment cards, there are three different ways that payment reversals can occur. Each happens for different reasons, with its own special implications for the merchant. What are the three types of payment reversals, and how can merchants minimize the impact reversals have on their revenue?Full Text:https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/payment-reversals©Chargeback Gurus 2021Production: Emily WoodwardNarration: Phil Claffey

Every merchant knows that when it comes time for a customer to make a payment to complete a purchase, any little bit of friction can lead to annoyance, second thoughts, and a lost sale. Once consumers get used to an easier way of paying for things, they rarely like to revert back to the less convenient way of doing things.“Seamless” transactions have been the watchword for a while, but the industry is turning its eye toward idea of invisible payments. What are invisible payments, how do they work, and what do merchants need to do to prepare for this new way of conducting transactions?Full Text:https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/invisible-payments©Chargeback Gurus 2021Production: Emily WoodwardNarration: Phil Claffey

Back in the days of check fraud, brick-and-mortar stores used to post mugshots behind the cash register that said, “Do not accept checks from this person!” Not a very sophisticated anti-fraud solution—but it worked. In the era of eCommerce fraud and cybercrime, things aren’t as simple.Online anonymity is the fraudster’s best weapon, and consumer demands for stricter privacy regulations have the side effect of making it even easier for fraudsters to mask themselves. However, device fingerprinting remains an effective and hard-to-evade method of identification. How can device fingerprinting be used to stop fraudsters and prevent chargebacks?Full Text:https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/device-fingerprinting©Chargeback Gurus 2021Production: Emily WoodwardNarration: Phil Claffey

Life would be easier for merchants if customers never wanted to return things, but returns are a fact of life and an inevitable cost of doing business. The silver lining is that every return is a potential chargeback avoided—if the customer hadn’t gone through the return and refund process, there’s a good chance they would have tried to get their money back from their bank instead.In fact, returns and chargebacks often share the same root causes, and refunds are always preferable to chargebacks because they’re cheaper and less harmful to your business. What are the most common reasons behind customer returns?It’s good to have a generous return and refund policy. When customers know they can come to you with their problems, return an unwanted purchase, and get their money back, they have little reason to dispute the transaction with their bank instead. With a return and refund, you’re only out the cost of the transaction, and you may even be able to resell the returned product.Full Text:https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/return-reasons©Chargeback Gurus 2021Production: Emily WoodwardNarration: Phil Claffey

Many of the most effective fraud prevention methods are all about answering one simple question: is the person making the transaction really who they claim to be? There are various ways to put this to the test, but none of them are infallible.Many merchants choose to rely on two-factor authentication by requiring their customers to log in with a password and then enter a one-time code sent to their phone via SMS messaging. How reliable is SMS verification when it comes to authenticating the true identity of a person trying to make a credit card purchase?Most methods of identity verification are based on an idea called “the three factors of authentication.” The premise is that you can verify someone’s identity by using three different factors: something they know, something they are, and something they have. “Something you know” could be a login password. “Something you are” could be biometric data, like a fingerprint. And “something you have” could be a smartphone.Full Text:https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/sms-verification©Chargeback Gurus 2021Production: Emily WoodwardNarration: Phil Claffey