Ethoca, the industry standard for collaboration-based technology solutions that enable card issuers and online merchants to increase card acceptance and stop ecommerce fraud and disputes, today announced the launch of its new Integrated Solution Suite.
When adopted at full scale across the industry, Ethoca’s suite of products - including Ethoca Eliminator, Ethoca Alerts and Enhanced Representments - can mitigate up to 90% of chargebacks from genuine fraud, friendly (or first-party) fraud and false claims. Even more importantly, it sets the stage for increased card acceptance across the ecosystem.
Today’s ecommerce ecosystem is plagued by a raft of issues that increase friction in the purchase process and create a negative experience for customers. With friendly fraud (whether innocent or hostile) and false claims now reaching 90% of all fraud volumes in sectors like digital goods, card issuers, merchants and customers are all facing a downward spiral of disputes that are having a significant impact on card acceptance. Industry estimates suggest that ‘false declines’ - when good customers are falsely declined due to the risk of fraud - are continuing to increase: for every $1 in confirmed fraud, $13 in legitimate transactions are falsely rejected. Customers experiencing a false decline will elect to abandon purchases at trusted ecommerce websites, pull out a different payment card or, in 39% of cases, potentially abandon the purchase altogether.[1]
Ethoca’s new solution suite is solving the ecommerce friction and customer experience problem through three lines of defence. The first line of defence is Ethoca Eliminator, a ground-breaking new solution that allows card issuers to tap into deep merchant intelligence (shopping cart details, IP address, account details, etc.) at the first moment a cardholder clicks on a transaction in their mobile banking app or calls into their bank to question a transaction. This unique process allows cardholders to better recognize their own transactions, regardless of whether the intention to dispute is innocent or malicious.
With disputes now deflected in near real-time, cardholders avoid having payment cards cancelled unnecessarily when good transactions are unwittingly reported as fraud. Merchants benefit by avoiding any impending chargeback and preserving the revenue from the transaction, while card issuers create a frictionless experience for cardholders and avoid the high operational costs associated with processing disputes. In pilot with a top five U.S. card issuer and major digital goods merchant, Eliminator successfully deflected 38% of disputes that would have otherwise become damaging chargebacks. More than 15 major card issuers globally and several of the world’s top digital goods brands have committed to Eliminator implementation throughout 2018.
The second line of defence in Ethoca’s suite is Ethoca Alerts - the company’s flagship product introduced in 2010. If during the Eliminator process a cardholder still insists on disputing the transaction, card issuers participating in Ethoca’s network will provide confirmation of fraudulent or disputed transactions to Ethoca. Ethoca makes this actionable intelligence available to more than 5,400 merchants participating in Ethoca’s network through real-time alerts that provide a window of opportunity to stop the fulfilment of goods and services and refund the transaction to avoid the chargeback. Card issuers who use the service benefit by avoiding chargeback processing costs and recovering fraud losses - including 3D Secure and low-value transaction write-offs - much more quickly and inexpensively than ever before.
The third line of defence is Enhanced Representments. Merchants who have sufficient compelling evidence to prove a case of friendly fraud or challenge other transaction disputes are often focused on recovering revenue they would otherwise lose through the chargeback process. Enhanced Representments is a completely automated solution focused on disputing chargebacks responsibly based on Ethoca’s deep understanding of chargeback processing and compelling evidence rules. It preserves an equitable balance across the ecosystem by enabling merchants to fight only those chargebacks supported by the right compelling evidence and without creating downstream pain for card issuers who are often negatively impacted by indiscriminate representment behaviours.
“Ethoca’s belief is that a layered approach - powered by the global collaboration network we pioneered - is the only real solution to combat the pervasive friction and poor customer experience typical of today’s ecommerce environment,” said Keith Briscoe, Chief Marketing & Product Officer at Ethoca. “Aiming to eradicate 90% of chargebacks while laying a new foundation for a transaction acceptance experience where no good customer is turned away is our current mission. This new solution suite takes us one step closer to our vision: creating a new set of rails for the rapid exchange of rich transaction data and intelligence designed to finally make frictionless ecommerce a reality.”