Sarah Elizabeth
Fraud is continuously changing, and so are fraud management and merchant solutions.
Keeping up with the surge of new fraud information is vital for merchants, but it’s hard to strike the delicate balance between fraud protection and driving revenue.
At the recent four-day Merchant Risk Council (MRC) Vegas 2019 — the largest event in the world focusing on fraud prevention, payment processing, cybersecurity and more — e-commerce merchants were given a wealth of information to make fraud prevention actionable. Here are the key takeaways that event attendees learned.
There was so much information shared at the MRC Vegas 2019 event that ClearSale developed the MRC Vegas 2019 Insights Report to highlight how to use the right tools, people, and data to implement effective fraud prevention programs.
Here’s just a sampling of what we learned at MRC Vegas 2019 that we think every e-commerce merchant should know as they build their business in 2019 and beyond.
Keeping Up With Payments
From authorization to settlement, e-commerce business owners need to understand how money moves through the payment chain and know the major players in payment processing, like the payment processor, payments gateway and issuing bank.
Because fraud can happen with any player at any point during a transaction, it’s critical for merchants to know the difference between these providers and how to implement the right fraud prevention solutions that will protect them throughout the payment chain.
Understanding True Transaction Costs
When customers place an order, it’s not just merchants reaping the financial benefit. The issuing bank, credit card association, merchant bank and payment processor all want their share of the sale, too. We’ll explain the four fees you pay each time you process a transaction, how these fees are calculated, and how you can get a better rate.
But these fees aren’t the only thing cutting into your profits. False declines can also take a huge bite out of revenue if merchants aren’t careful. One of the hot topics at MRC Vegas 2019 was how merchants can optimize their payments authorization report; identify decline report trends; and understand why knowing the turndown, or decline, rate is so important to a business.
Identifying — and Preventing — Fraud
Each order your business processes falls into one of four categories: true negative, false negative, false positive or true positive.
Correctly identifying the transaction category for each sale isn’t always easy, however. MRC speakers shared the top information breaches in 2018 — some you may have never heard of — and how they can affect making the right call on a transaction.
Our insights paper gathers the significant statistics presented about merchant categories most at risk, average ticket values and common fraud types to help you protect your business — regardless of your size or industry.
Measuring Chargeback Rates
Chargebacks can hit your bottom line as long as six months after a transaction is processed, which can be an accounting nightmare.
That’s why we’re sharing critical merchant information, like:
- The two ways to calculate chargeback rates
- Your business’s target chargeback rate
- Tips for successfully disputing chargebacks
Understanding Your Numbers
Not every merchant is looking at their TC40 reports, but they should. They’re a great ally in understanding your chargeback numbers. Learn more about what information these reports can provide and why merchants need to understand the difference between TC40s and chargebacks.
Addressing the False Decline Problem
Even if merchants think they don’t have a fraud or chargeback problem, they may be unaware they’re losing significant revenue to false declines. We recap how merchants can determine if they have a problem, how to deal with grey-area transaction and the other issues that can hurt your real order approval rate.
Choosing the Right Fraud Prevention Solution
To be successful, every merchant must efficiently use their resources and be able to verify customers are who they say they are. But striking this balance isn’t easy, and choosing the right fraud prevention solution can be even harder.
Today, preventing fraud is a collaborative effort, requiring more than just human analysis. Some merchants turn to transaction rules to filter out suspicious orders, but that’s not always enough, either.
In our insights paper, we go in-depth about the pros and cons of individual solutions and explain why more merchants are combining human analysis with machine learning to help identify subtle patterns and anomalies in everyday transactions.
Interested in learning more about the top industry trends discussed at the largest risk management event in the world? Read our MRC Vegas 2019 insights report, and learn the strategies that will protect your business against the increased risk of fraud.
