As our economy becomes increasingly digitised, and payments made on our cards and smartphones gradually replace cash transactions, retailers and consumers alike are making themselves more susceptible to criminal activity. As a result, online retailers must prioritise fraud prevention and assess whether digital payments made to them are legitimate or fraudulent, then accept or decline them.
Any decent fraud management will naturally involve declining transactions that appear fraudulent ? but it’s unfortunately likely that legitimate transactions are going to be declined along the way. The Aite data shows that as many as 62% of surveyed merchants reported their false decline rates have increased over the past two years.
The negative effects of false declines are both short- and long-term. within the short term, money is lost through refusing a legitimate customer the power to finish a transaction. within the future , and of much more concern, customers are left angry and refuse to return thereto merchant within the future. A false decline could lead on to the customer affected writing negative reviews online which can have the consequence of creating others avoid that retailer.
It is difficult to repair the transaction approval process once you don’t know when or how problems have occurred. Adding insult to injury is that the incontrovertible fact that false declines are notoriously hard to live? some merchants are even completely unaware of the matter . But there are ways of preventing false declines.
Infographic created by First Data, a merchant services provider.
