Chargeback Gurus' Audio Blog
78 episodes - English - Latest episode: almost 3 years ago -Chargeback Gurus is a global company offering chargeback management and analytics solutions to increase customer satisfaction and drive repeat purchases. As trusted advisors to card networks, financial institutions and the Fortune 500 — Chargeback Gurus empowers businesses to combat constantly evolving fraud tactics and customer disputes that directly threaten profitability.
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Episodes
Contactless Payments Limits and Fraud
July 14, 2021 20:00 - 9 minutes - 6.59 MBA 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...
All About Bank Identification Numbers
July 12, 2021 20:00 - 6 minutes - 4.48 MBMany 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 ...
Credit Card Dispute Fraud Prevention
July 09, 2021 20:00 - 7 minutes - 5.49 MBWhen 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 commit...
Dealing with Chargebacks in PayPal Resolution Center
July 07, 2021 20:00 - 6 minutes - 4.79 MBPayPal 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 ban...
Improving Your Customer Return Policy
July 05, 2021 20:00 - 7 minutes - 4.97 MBIn 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 th...
Guide to Order Insight
July 02, 2021 20:00 - 13 minutes - 9.37 MBThe 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 O...
All About American Express Chargebacks
June 30, 2021 20:00 - 7 minutes - 4.83 MBWhen 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 ...
Venmo Chargeback Protection
June 28, 2021 20:00 - 7 minutes - 5.13 MBCredit 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 c...
Preventing Fraud and False Declines During the Holidays
June 02, 2021 20:00 - 6 minutes - 4.79 MBThe 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 screeni...
Creating a Good Merchant Descriptor
May 31, 2021 20:00 - 6 minutes - 4.2 MBAs 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 attache...
Protecting Yourself from SIM Swap Fraud
May 28, 2021 20:00 - 6 minutes - 4.25 MBPhone 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, bu...
Getting to Know Credit Card Response Codes
May 26, 2021 20:00 - 8 minutes - 5.9 MBThe 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 d...
Preventing Fraud for Onmichannel Merchants
May 24, 2021 20:00 - 8 minutes - 5.66 MBIn 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 pres...
QR Code Payment Fraud
May 21, 2021 20:00 - 8 minutes - 5.57 MBTo 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 ar...
Best Approaches to Credit Card Processing
May 19, 2021 20:00 - 8 minutes - 5.87 MBAt 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 f...
Kinds of Payment Reversals
May 17, 2021 20:00 - 7 minutes - 5.25 MBEvery 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 ...
Getting to Know Invisible Payments
May 14, 2021 20:00 - 8 minutes - 5.57 MBEvery 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 th...
Device Fingerprinting for Fraud Prevention
May 12, 2021 20:00 - 8 minutes - 5.83 MBBack 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 fingerpr...
Common Reasons for Customer Returns
May 10, 2021 20:00 - 7 minutes - 5.45 MBLife 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 charge...
Avoiding Fraud with SMS Verification
May 07, 2021 20:00 - 7 minutes - 5.46 MBMany 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 th...
Threats of P2P Fraud on Cash App
May 05, 2021 20:00 - 6 minutes - 4.53 MBIn the fast-paced mobile economy, peer-to-peer payment apps are surging in popularity over older, more laborious methods of sending and receiving money. Platforms like Cash App make it easy to exchange quick, informal payments, even for users who aren’t customers of traditional banking institutions. The downside is that cybercriminals are flocking to these platforms too, exploiting their unique features to take advantage of users who are still learning the best ways to protect their finance...
Merchant Identification Numbers
May 03, 2021 20:00 - 8 minutes - 5.74 MBEvery day, banks and card networks process hundreds of millions of payment card transactions. These digital exchanges are the lifeblood of eCommerce—and many brick-and-mortar establishments, too. With so many businesses participating in this payments ecosystem, you have to wonder how all of these different entities can tell merchants apart and route their transactions to the right recipient every time. The answer is that every merchant has a unique signifier that functions as their home add...
Internet of Things and Chargebacks
April 30, 2021 20:00 - 7 minutes - 5.51 MBImagine rigorously following the best practices for ecommerce security, using complex passwords and two-factor authentication for every site you visit…only to be betrayed by your own refrigerator. It’s not that far-fetched—as Internet of Things devices continue to make inroads with consumers, fraudsters are taking a long look at the ways in which these devices can be subverted and hijacked for criminal activity. Merchants who manufacture, sell, or interface with IoT devices may find themsel...
Kinds of Chargeback Protection Services
April 28, 2021 20:00 - 6 minutes - 4.67 MBChargebacks can come at you from so many different directions, and it can be tough to come up with a strategy to stop them all. The tools and prevention methods that work to minimize true fraud chargebacks, for example, will do nothing to help you avoid chargebacks that result from merchant error or friendly fraud. Many merchants feel overwhelmed by the scale of the chargeback problem, and turn to their payment processors and outside vendors for help. Some of these providers offer chargebac...
Avoid Chargebacks Using Fraud Filters
April 26, 2021 20:00 - 7 minutes - 5.47 MBIf you've got a fraud problem, you've got a chargeback problem. Chargeback rights were enshrined in the law specifically to combat the problem of credit card fraud, which has only grown more pervasive as ecommerce takes over our shopping habits. True fraud chargebacks are especially problematic because they cannot be fought after the fact, only prevented in advance. One way for merchants to get ahead of fraudsters is by using fraud filters that identify and screen out potentially fraudulent...
Guide to Payment Processors
April 23, 2021 20:00 - 8 minutes - 5.55 MBTo thrive in the interconnected world of ecommerce, merchants can't just handle everything on their own. Partners and vendors provide merchants with their network connections, web hosting, and many other specialized services—such as credit card processing. Every day, merchants rely on their payment processors to make it possible for them to accept the card transactions that make online shopping possible. Your relationship with your payment processor is an important one, and it can have a bi...
Avoiding Clean Fraud
April 21, 2021 20:00 - 6 minutes - 4.5 MBGetting away with fraud isn’t always easy. As hard as fraudsters try to find newer and sneakier ways to steal payment credentials and deceive merchants, the smartest minds in the payment industry are always finding ways to stop them. Sometimes the only way to get around state-of-the-art fraud detection is to make everything appear as legitimate and above-board as possible by avoiding all of the usual signs and indicators. Fraud is a dirty business—and some of the most dangerous fraudsters a...
The Importance of PCI-DSS Compliance
April 19, 2021 20:00 - 7 minutes - 5.01 MBCredit card fraud is one of the biggest problems plaguing ecommerce today. It steals money from innocent victims, saps consumer confidence in online shopping, and saddles merchants with expensive and harmful chargebacks. To fight this problem, the industry has backed a set of standards designed to protect consumer data from fraudsters. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard applies to all organizations that process credit cards from the major card networks, and provides guidelines...
Guide to Negative Option Billing
April 16, 2021 20:00 - 6 minutes - 4.5 MBThere are good reasons to offer different billing options for a service. Creating accessible payment plans for the budget-conscious, for example, while offering savings to customers willing to make a larger up-front investment. Sometimes, the billing plan itself is part of the sales pitch, like a free trial or bonus offer that’s too good to pass up. When the catch is that accepting the offer locks the customer into recurring billings that must be explicitly opted out of, that’s negative opt...
Avoiding Online Gambling Fraud
April 14, 2021 20:00 - 7 minutes - 5.29 MBAnyone who engages in online gambling understands that there’s a significant element of risk involved. Playing games of chance and letting the odds determine your fate always carries some danger that you’ll end up losing, but the rules you’re playing by are supposed to be fair. Fraudsters upend this delicate balance by forcing themselves into online gambling scenarios where they can, cheat, hack, and steal to take advantage of both the house and other players. How is fraud impacting the wor...
Preventing Triangulation Fraud
April 12, 2021 20:00 - 6 minutes - 4.62 MBIn some ways, online fraud is like any other sector in the tech industry—in order to stay profitable, they have to keep innovating. It’s not always easy to extract actual cash money out of a stolen credit card number, and most fraudsters are interested in cash and not whatever random goods they can purchase before the card gets reported and blocked. One scheme that fraudsters have come up with to maximize their ill-gotten revenue is triangulation fraud, which effectively launders stolen cre...
Identifying Credit Card Fraud
February 03, 2021 21:00 - 6 minutes - 4.7 MBCredit card fraud remains one of the biggest problems to plague ecommerce. For the most part, consumers accept the risk, knowing that they’re protected from liability if someone uses their card without authorization. This protection comes in the form of chargebacks, and merchants end up footing the bill. Merchants are stuck accepting true fraud chargebacks and eating the associated costs and fees. The only real way to avoid true fraud chargebacks is to identify or prevent fraudulent transac...
Tools For Fraud Prevention
February 03, 2021 18:00 - 7 minutes - 5.21 MBFraud is an ever-present danger for ecommerce merchants, and true fraud chargebacks can be some of the most frustrating to deal with. Even when you've optimized your business operations to reduce merchant error chargebacks and have a good system in place for fighting friendly fraud chargebacks, true fraud can remain a persistent problem, and there's no way to fight them after the fact. The best strategy for merchants is to follow best practices for preventing fraud and use effective and up-...
Making Use of Manual Review
February 03, 2021 14:00 - 7 minutes - 5.23 MBTo protect your ecommerce business from fraudsters, you need the right tools for the job. Good fraud prevention tools can identify and screen out fraudulent transactions, but there’s always a balance to be struck. If you reject orders that come with even the smallest red flags, you might reject legitimate customers. If you’re too lenient, the anti-fraud tools can’t serve their purpose. One solution is to manually review the orders that fall into this gray area. Are manual review processes th...
Fighting Chargebacks with Delivery Confirmation
December 15, 2020 22:00 - 7 minutes - 5.21 MBFor consumers, few things are as frustrating as a package that never arrives. They’ve paid for it, anticipated it, waited for it…and it doesn’t show up. No matter what the cause—the carrier took it to the wrong address, thieves swiped it, it got lost under a conveyor belt somewhere—the buyer is going to want someone to make things right, and often that means they’re going to call their bank and demand a chargeback on the grounds that the merchant never delivered their order. Most carriers of...
How to Deal with Cashback Chargebacks
December 09, 2020 16:00 - 7 minutes - 4.83 MBIt’s a little bit ironic that while cash-based transactions keep becoming increasingly less frequent, it’s never been easier to get cash. What once required an in-person transaction with a human bank teller became a self-service process at automated teller machines, and nowadays, who wants to bother hunting down an ATM that won’t charge fees when you could just get free cash back with any purchase at your local corner store? Once the exclusive domain of grocery stores, many merchants now off...
FAQ: 2020 Visa Chargeback Guide
December 03, 2020 19:00 - 17 minutes - 11.8 MBVisa is the world’s largest card network, with an annual purchase volume that exceeds $1 trillion. Nearly every merchant that accepts credit cards accepts Visa, and so it is vitally important for merchants to understand Visa’s chargeback rules, especially as they relate to fighting fraudulent chargebacks that come through the Visa network. A solid grasp of these rules can help merchants win disputes, prevent chargebacks, and lower their chargeback rate. Of course, some of the rules are more...
Virtual Account Numbers and eCommerce Fraud Prevention
December 02, 2020 15:00 - 6 minutes - 4.79 MBThe very thing that makes credit cards so easy and convenient to use in so many different situations is the same thing that makes them so vulnerable to fraud. You only need to have a few key numbers to complete a credit card transaction, and in the age of ecommerce those numbers are being stored and shared constantly. From one small act of data theft, a fraudster can potentially steal thousands of dollars. But credit card numbers don’t have to be permanent. Could the virtual account numbers...
Tips to Prevent Recurring Billing Chargebacks
November 25, 2020 18:00 - 7 minutes - 4.93 MBWhat does the latest must-see streaming video service have in common with the subscription box companies that ship grooming supplies and cocktail ingredients on a monthly basis? They’re both relying on recurring billing to get paid for the goods they’re providing. Popular with merchants and consumers alike, subscription services are a fast-growing trend in ecommerce. There’s just one drawback—they tend to attract a lot of friendly fraud chargebacks. When subscriptions are a major contributo...
Tips to Prevent Recurring Billing Chargebacks
November 25, 2020 18:00 - 7 minutes - 4.93 MBWhat does the latest must-see streaming video service have in common with the subscription box companies that ship grooming supplies and cocktail ingredients on a monthly basis? They’re both relying on recurring billing to get paid for the goods they’re providing. Popular with merchants and consumers alike, subscription services are a fast-growing trend in ecommerce. There’s just one drawback—they tend to attract a lot of friendly fraud chargebacks. When subscriptions are a major contributo...
FAQ: Stripe Chargebacks
November 09, 2020 17:00 - 13 minutes - 9.52 MBStripe was founded on the premise of the online economy’s potential. It is a payment platform that allows merchants to collect and customers to send payments online and via mobile. Over the years, Stripe has seen a rise in popularity due to its customizable development tools and straightforward solutions. While Stripe is preferred by a number of merchants for eliminating financial complexity, merchants still see a fair share of disputes. So what do you need to know to overcome your next St...
Visa Rules for First Party Fraud
November 06, 2020 20:00 - 7 minutes - 4.94 MBThe big problem with fraud is that it’s always changing forms. As soon as regulators and consumers get wise to a particular scheme and learn how to prevent it, the fraudsters come up with a new way to steal people’s money. Many forms of fraud involve exploiting the chargeback process, which is why the card networks keep handing down new mandates to get them under control. Next month, new Visa rules will be taking effect to deal with first-party fraud. What is first-party fraud, and what do m...
FAQ: What is Address Verification Service?
August 29, 2020 00:00 - 8 minutes - 5.52 MBThe only effective way to stop true fraud chargebacks is to prevent fraud in the first place, and one of the most often recommended anti-fraud tools is Address Verification Service, or AVS. It works by matching the address provided by the customer against the cardholder’s address on file with the card issuer, where a discrepancy would indicate possible fraud. This can work well as a frontline defense against stolen cards, but it won’t catch every fraudster, and using it too restrictively cou...
Pre- Compliance Chargebacks & Reason Code 98 Explained
August 28, 2020 05:00 - 7 minutes - 4.96 MBThe chargeback process is heavily rule-based, and it can be tempting to believe that if you memorize the rules and follow them carefully, you can avoid any serious chargeback problems. As any eCommerce merchant can tell you, it’s not really that simple. In fact, there exists a special type of “pre-compliance” chargeback that banks can initiate to seek reimbursement from other banks when rule violations cause them financial harm. What should merchants know about these behind-the-scenes charge...
A Merchant's Guide to MasterCard Chargebacks
August 27, 2020 00:00 - 8 minutes - 5.55 MBThe card networks are the final authority on chargebacks. All of the rules, reason codes, and phases of the chargeback process are designed by the card networks, and when the banks can’t agree on an outcome, the card network is the final arbiter. On the surface level, chargebacks appear largely the same no matter what network you’re dealing with, but each one has different regulations and time limits. To manage your chargebacks effectively, you have to know how to play by each network’s rul...
Visa Resolve Online (VROL) Explained
August 14, 2020 05:00 - 8 minutes - 5.83 MBThe growing online and global market has seen the rise in credit card disputes, many of which are billed as “friendly fraud” as a result of chargebacks being abused by consumers. Disputes take up a lot of time, resources, and research for merchants, card issuing agencies, banks, and even customers themselves. The rising number of credit card disputes, also known as chargebacks, along with increasing processing times and costs has prompted Visa to come up with the Visa Claims Resolution (VCR...
Distributed Ledger Technology and Chargeback Prevention
August 14, 2020 05:00 - 7 minutes - 5.08 MBYou know how the old saying goes: give a person a Bitcoin and they might realize some short-term investment gains for a day; teach them how the blockchain works and they’ll understand a technology with a lifetime of potentially useful applications. Something like that, anyway. The real prize of the cryptocurrency boom may well prove to be the concept of the blockchain itself, or as many now prefer to call it, distributed ledger technology. As with any new technology, sorting out the genuinel...
Chargeback Representment Explained
August 12, 2020 05:00 - 15 minutes - 10.8 MBWhen we talk about how to “fight and win” against chargebacks, what are we really saying? For the most part, what we’re referring to is chargeback representment. This is the part of the dispute process where the merchant has a chance to contest the chargeback and convince the issuing bank to reverse it and give back the disputed funds. It’s called representment because the merchant is “presenting” the charge a second time. Understanding how chargeback represenment fits within the overall dis...
BOPUS Chargebacks Explained
August 10, 2020 05:00 - 6 minutes - 4.8 MBIt’s been a long time since anything had as big an impact on the way we shop as ecommerce. Online shopping has had a tremendous influence on consumer preferences and expectations, and physical retailers have had to make many changes and concessions to keep shoppers walking through their doors. One such innovation is allowing customers to make a purchase online, but holding it at a retail location for pickup instead of shipping it. This practice is a hit with consumers, but it has created n...
Visa Mandates for Gas Station Chargebacks
August 07, 2020 05:00 - 7 minutes - 5.51 MBMerchants who deal in the necessities of modern life and other traditional commodities may feel less vulnerable to chargebacks than retailers operating in the wild west of ecommerce. Certainly, there are risks that are reduced when you’re selling straightforward products at physical storefronts. However, merchants should always seek to understand the specific chargeback scenarios that affect their type of business. This October, the chargeback liability for non-EMV transactions at gas statio...