Chargeback Gurus' Audio Blog

In 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 finances over these new and convenient apps. What makes Cash App vulnerable to fraud, and how are scammers taking advantage of it?

Full Text:
https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/cash-app-fraud

©Chargeback Gurus 2021
Production: Emily Woodward
Narration: Sarah Rife

Every 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 address in the payments world: their Merchant Identification Number, or MID. What is the significance of your Merchant Identification Number, and what does it actually do for you?

Full Text:
https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/merchant-identification-number

©Chargeback Gurus 2021
Production: Emily Woodward
Narration: Phil Claffey

Imagine 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 themselves facing a rising tide of chargebacks from new and unexpected sources. How do Internet of Things devices open the door to fraud, abuse, and chargebacks?

The global market for IoT devices is expected to grow by more than 10% annually over the next few years. As is often the case with new technologies, first we laugh (“does my dishwasher really need to be connected to the internet?”), then the must-have devices start hitting the market, and before you know it, they’re everywhere.

Full Text:
https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/internet-of-things

©Chargeback Gurus 2021
Production: Emily Woodward
Narration: Phil Claffey

Chargebacks 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 chargeback protection in the form of services or guarantees that promise to mitigate the threat of chargebacks. Do chargeback protection plans really work?

Full Text:
https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/chargeback-protection-services

©Chargeback Gurus 2021
Production: Emily Woodward
Narration: Sarah Rife 

If 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 transactions. How well do fraud filters really work, and how they best be used to proactively avoid true fraud chargebacks.

Online retail fraud keeps growing more and more prevalent, costing merchants hundreds of millions of dollars every year. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic pushed consumers toward ecommerce shopping in even greater numbers, and all that increased activity has caused a commensurate rise in fraud attempts.

When a consumer finds out that their card has been stolen and used to make unauthorized purchases, their best recourse is to report the fraud to their bank and receive a chargeback.

Full Text:
https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/fraud-filters

©Chargeback Gurus 2021
Production: Emily Woodward
Narration: Phil Claffey

To 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 big impact on your bottom line. What do payment processors really do, and how can you choose the best one for your business needs?

In both card-present and card-not-present environments, making a credit card payment has become a swift and seamless process. The customer provides their card information, the transaction is authorized, and payment is complete. It all transpires within a matter of seconds, despite the fact that quite a lot of behind-the-scenes communication is happening to make sure everything is carried out properly.

While there are many entities involved in every credit card transaction, the payment processor does a lot of the heavy lifting. Payment processors make their money by charging fees for the transaction activity they handle—including chargebacks, which are detrimental to the overall payments ecosystem and can have a negative impact on everyone involved in them.

Full Text:
https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/payment-processors

©Chargeback Gurus 2021
Production: Emily Woodward
Narration: Phil Claffey

Getting 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 are the ones who make it look clean. What can merchants do to protect themselves from so-called clean fraud?

Clean fraud can come in many forms. It’s defined by its ability to evade detection by normal anti-fraud tools and methods, which can be accomplished in a variety of ways. What makes clean fraud so dangerous for merchants is that it’s so difficult to prevent—you usually won’t know you’ve been victimized by clean fraud until after the cardholder realizes it and demands a chargeback.

Full Text:
https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/clean-fraud

©Chargeback Gurus 2021
Production: Emily Woodward
Narration: Sarah Rife 

Credit 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 on how to safely handle cardholder information to reduce fraud and data theft. How can merchants protect their customer data and prevent fraud by complying with the PCI-DSS?

Adhering to the PCI-DSS standards isn’t just a matter of internal practice. Compliance with PCI-DSS is certified by the PCI Security Standards Council, and for many merchants, PCI-DSS compliance certification is an important way to communicate to their customers and partners that they take data security seriously and have taken all the steps necessary to protect sensitive data to the best of their ability.

Full Text:
https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/pci-dss-compliance

©Chargeback Gurus 2021
Production: Emily Woodward
Narration: Sarah Rife 

There 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 option billing, and it can be a frequent source of disputes. What do merchants need to know about using negative option billing?

The history of negative option billing predates the era of ecommerce, and it has never enjoyed a particularly good reputation among consumers, despite the fact that the book-of-the-month and mail-order record clubs that relied on negative option billing offers used to be fairly popular.

Full Text:
https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/negative-option-billing

©Chargeback Gurus 2021
Production: Emily Woodward
Narration: Sarah Rife 

Anyone 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 world of online gambling, and what can merchants to do get this problem under control?

Online credit card fraud is a huge problem for every merchant in ecommerce, from the biggest and most family-friendly retailers to small, niche-oriented internet gaming sites. The total global cost of cybercrime may exceed $6 trillion per year by 2021, and a significant portion of that financial burden falls directly on the merchants who sell goods and services over the internet. The costs of ecommerce fraud come back to bite merchants in multiple different ways.

Full Text:
https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/online-gambling-fraud

©Chargeback Gurus 2021
Production: Emily Woodward
Narration: Phil Claffey