Forum Moderators: buckworks
Using other tools like Address Verification System (AVS) or the Verified By Visa system will also provide you with extra protection, and depending on exactly what options you choose, will help you eliminate most of your chargebacks, and possibly protect you from the cost of some other fraudulent transactions
In our experience, most of the attempted frauds involved stolen/hacked credit card issued by US banks for shipment to another country.
I am not familar with linkpoint but Worldpay will be able to do this for you. Otherwise, you may wish to do this manually by doing a reverse ip check on your orders to see which country/region it is likely to have originated from.
Definitely locate a "preffered vendor" of Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode. I would suggest one that delivers this ASP, and specializes in this, and only this.
I recommend avoiding vendors who multitask with additonal software developements, and try to sell you on other ways to spend money with them once you approach them...(cough,cough...cybersource.)
The problem is, that mostly people dont have an idea for what they were charged and dont call and going to bank.
It sounds like a lot of the chargebacks here are because people aren't recognizing the charge, rather than overt fraud.
I'm not familiar with either of the processors mentioned, does the charge show up in their name rather than the name of the company actually supplying the downloadable product?
If so, you'll need to educate the customer (probably repeatedly) to expect the charge and company name. Even better, use PayPal or a real merchant account that supplies your company name. If you can get away with PayPal, that would eliminate of a lot of it, as people aren't nearly as likely to forget about the transaction when they have to do it right then.
Visa VbV Protection:
(All Visa)
Reason Code: 75: Cardholder Doesn't recognize the transaction
MasterCard MCSC Protection:
(only on enrolled cards for now)
Reason Code:4863:Cardholder Not Recognized
The only people who will see it are those that have established a pin number.
Visa will protect you on 100% of all cards regardless of whether they established a pin number or not.
Got lots of chargebacks. We started issuing little notes telling the customer our company name and address, and the chargebacks went to almost nothing.
If that's what is happening to you maybe putting some info on your checkout page or your confirmation email would help.
ray
if you're using PayPal, make sure you set the "Credit Card Statement Name" on your PayPal business account so that your customers see your business billing name when they get their credit card bills. you can enter up to 11 characters that will show up on their statement.
you can access the option under "Profile", "Seller Preferences", "Payment Receiving Preferences", at the bottom of the page.
CompWorld
After the credit card charge has been accepted, send an email to the customer. This email reminds the customer that they "have purchased one copy of widgetware from yourcompany.com for $14.95 but your (i.e. the customer) credit card statement will show only a charge from financialintermediary.com. So, when you see a charge from financialintermediary.com for $14.95 on your next statement, it will be for the purchase of the widgetware, from us."
Then, you have a link in the email, to a unique orphan page (i.e. not linked to any other page) on your server and you advise the customer that once they have clicked on that link, their widgetware can be downloaded. You could even have it so the orphan page had a box where the customer filled in their email address. Then, if the Session ID and email address matched the Session ID and email address specified in the checkout process, then the URL for the download is provided. Once the download is finished, they get a message that reminds them again that their credit card statement will show a charge for $14.95 from financialintermediary.com. (if the Session ID and/or email address is different, then the customer is served a brief "Can't download widgetware" form, which they complete thus enabling you to interact with the customer and satisfy yourself this is not a fraudulent transaction).
Finally, you could send a reminder email, say 21 days after the transaction, reminding the customer that the $14.95 charge from financialintermediary.com is the charge for the widgetware they purchased from you.
The purpose of the above is to reduce fraud by further IP checks and email interaction between you and you clients plus, to reinforce in the customers mind as to what that charge for $14.95 from financialintermediary.com, relates to.
I know that I constantly have problems with my own credit card statement due to numerous charges billed from financial intermediaries that do not record the name of the vendor. The way I track down what purchase the charge relates to and the real vendor name, is to look at emails from vendors dated the day of the charge and also one day either side (to allow for time differences).
the difference in chargebacks when people do or don't have the vendor name included on the credit card statement charge is tremendous.
when we introduced this feature a couple of years ago, it dramatically reduced chargebacks for vendors who use it. now charges show up on credit card statements as "PYPL*VENDORNAME", and people remember what it was all about...
Problem was the company name the customer was seeing on their cc statement was different than the website.
After setting up a new merchant account with the website name on it, chargebacks dropped to zero.
If you want then I can sticky mail you an example of one such reminder email that I received yesterday. You can reword it and use it.
The only people who will be prompted with a VbV screen will be those who will already be enrolled in the program.
Visa will offer you 100% coverage on all your cards.
You will attempt to authenticate all Visa cards. This will be occuring on the back-end. By attempting to authenticate, you will be protected on the cards. The only people who will actuallly be authenticated and see the VbV sign will have already established a pin # prior to checking out. In reality the only people who will be prompted with the VbV screen will be expecting to see it.
It's a common misconception that most merchants have. They assume that VbV will hurt sales. Most of the time VbV will be protectinng you as the merchnat on the back-end, beyond the consumers knowledge.
If I wanted to implement VbV, how would I go about doing it? Do I need a new cart? A new merchant account?
That's a good question. According to Visa all processors and gateways intenationally are required to be compliant with VbV. If you wanted to recieve the service through authorize.net you would have to call them for it if you are running AIM.
If you are running SIM I would HIGHLY suggest you call the company that provides the service for them, Cardinal Commerce. I was frustrated with Authorize.net and their representative, so I contacted Cardinal. I spoke to one guy and he answered all my questions and I started the registration process online that night. I was up and running in 3 hours, after they recieved my contract.
The beuaty about Cardinal is that they bundle thier Centinel program to enclude VbV, MCSecureCode. So in three hours I was up and running both programs blocking chargebacks on each card.
They are a North American company but they function on an international level. They have data centers around the world.
I had never accepted international order until I began these programs last year.
I discovered them through a recommendation on another forum, which was provided by a very repudable member there.
They have an online registration which is very simple. My IT staff downloaded and implemented their thin client in one hour after the contract was completed. I was running test authentications from their corporate server that day, and I was live after the weekend.
I suggest calling Rick Lynch at Cardinal Commerce at 1-440-352-8444 ext. 112. He can answer each an every question you have.
rickl@cardinalcommerce.com
www.cardinalcommerce.com
This was the best business move I have made since I streamlined my entire business online. It's truly revolutionary, and everyone should be doing this.
There does not seem to be a process to notify the real cardholder of their compromised identify, as the email belongs to the offender and phone number is fake. The processing gateway and acquirer cannot tell them and VISA and MasterCard want you to hold an account in order to launch an investigation - not just be using a third party gateway.
We capture IP’s but that’s not always accurate (epically for AOL and satellite ISP’s). We know the offenders are from specific countries from some consistent traces and were wondering, if, or how others have blocked this activity upfront and not at the transaction level?
I am not 100% chargeback free. I can still recieve a chargeback on the MC's that aren't covered, and JCB's/Amex's and DISC's. But I am "fraudlent" chargeback free on 100% of all my Visa's.
When I spoke to Rick he explained by the end of the year MasterCard is going to offer this same blanket coverage. So essentially I will be almost chargeback free on 90% of my trx.
Amex's program will be out by the middle of this year, and JCB's is alreday competed but hasn't gone live. DISC will jump on board at the start of next year.
Cardinal bundles all the programs together free of charge, and makes all the updates as they show up. It's an extremely complicated form of software that requires continuous maintenance and modifications but Cardinal handles all of that respectively for free, thank GOD. Once you go live you'll see that its virtually plug and play.
Costs are relative to sales volume and you pay by the trx. It starts at $.10 and decreases with volume.
