Verifi, Inc., a leading provider of payment and risk management solutions for card-not-present (CNP) merchants, today announced the formal launch of Order Insight, an advanced collaboration platform that dramatically improves efficiency across all parties in the payments ecosystem.
Enabling robust order details to be shared in real time between cardholders, merchants and issuers, Order Insights enables issuing banks and cardholders to determine the legitimacy of a sale at the time a billing inquiry or dispute arises, thereby reducing fraudulent claims and unnecessary chargebacks as well as avoiding loss of sales and profits.
Today’s Dispute Process Creates Significant, Shared Challenges
Today, up to 86% of cardholders bypass the merchant and contact their issuing bank directly to dispute or question a charge on their bill. Disputes can often occur for a variety of reasons ranging from the cardholder simply being confused over unclear or incomplete billing descriptors to legitimate instances of criminal fraud. Many however, have become accustomed to using the dispute process as a refunding tool resulting from buyer’s remorse or those seeking to “game the system” through first party or “friendly fraud.” According to industry research firm, Aite Group, 60 to 70% of chargebacks are the result of first party or “friendly fraud.”
Lacking the information or purchase details needed to legitimize a sale, the most common option for the issuing bank is to credit the cardholder and issue a chargeback. Merchants lose valid sales and profits to significant and unnecessary chargeback fees and drained resources. In the worst cases, the cardholder abandons the brand altogether while issuers are challenged to provide the best customer experience. Issuers incur added operational and representment costs as merchants dispute valid sales lost to unwarranted chargebacks. Customers ultimately see the result of all of this in higher prices. It’s a multi-billion-dollar global problem that affects everyone.
Order Insight – The Right Information for the Right Parties at The Right Time
Integrated with top issuers, Order Insight’s patent pending platform provides robust transaction details including the merchant’s name and contact information, date of purchase, name of device used in the order process and item or service descriptions (size, color, style). Order Insights can integrate this data directly into the issuing bank’s online or mobile applications. In most cases having access to this data can resolve a questionable charge and avoid a phone call to the issuer, saving the sale as well as wasted time, resources and costs for all parties that would occur through the dispute representment process.
When a cardholder elects to call the issuing bank, Order Insights equips the bank’s call center representatives with the compelling evidence they need to identify true instances of fraud, flag unethical cardholders looking to game the system or resolve the confusion created by vague billing descriptors before the matter escalates into costly chargebacks and resulting losses.
For those disputes that are not addressed upfront, Order Insight facilitates the efficient resolution of the dispute between the merchant and the issuer to stop it from escalating to an expensive chargeback.
“Fraud and chargebacks continue to be a major issue for merchants and will continue to grow as shoppers migrate more of their shopping to online and mobile commerce”, said Matthew Katz, CEO of Verifi. As payments continue to change and expand, we remain committed to being a disruptive market leader driving real innovation for the broader industry. Our award-winning, Cardholder Dispute Resolution Network (“CDRN”) was created to and continues to help merchants and issuers promptly resolve true cardholder initiated disputes at their origin, stopping them from becoming chargebacks and incurring all the added costs and pain that goes along with them.”
“Order Insight is the next phase of our services evolution where all parties are connected to work together for mutual benefit. Merchants retain their legitimate, hard-earned sales upfront while avoiding profits lost to chargebacks and resource drain on the back end. Issuers provide a better customer experience for their cardholders, help lower instances of “friendly fraud” and reduce operational expenses by focusing on true fraud risks. Cardholders gain better information and clarity into their purchase details and avoid frustrating back-and-forth to obtain recourse for a sale they may have legitimately made. “
“We saw great initial results and received some important learning to enhance our offering in our product pilot. Our clients retained over 25% of their at-risk sales upfront and resolved the remainder of their disputes efficiently without getting hit with the added expenses associated with them becoming a chargeback. It’s important to note that this test experience generally exceeds the success rate most merchants achieve in going through the time and costs to dispute a chargeback through the representment process. We are excited to roll out Order Insight to the market and fully expect these results to improve as we expand our network footprint globally.”