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0 pointsmichaelt12y ago0 comments

Can I piggyback on this and ask an unrelated question I'm curious about?

Let's say an online merchant gets a transaction they very strongly suspect is a stolen credit card (perhaps it's from a customer with a long history of using stolen cards) but it validates just fine. Is there any provision in the interface for merchants to ask the credit card company to perform extra fraud checks, like calling the cardholder?

0 comments

kevinconroy12y ago

No, there are no such provisions. The card companies have their own fraud prevention/detection departments which mine transactions and look for abnormal behavior. If they spot something out of the ordinary (big purchase, foreign purchase, etc) then they will call you to validate.

mjwhansen12y ago

Anecdote: I used to work with donation processing, and we had a situation where we had transactions that I knew we're identity theft (email addresses were the same, IP the same, but zip, CVV, name correct, and all submitted in a short timeframe). I refunded the transactions and called the banks to report that the cards had been stolen, and the banks basically threw their hands up in the air.

kevinconroy12y ago

I work with donation processing. We found the same response from the banks, so we've started trying to look up the identify theft victims in the white pages and calling them. Sadly, we only get a 20% hit rate for working phone numbers and typically only get in touch with half of them.

bigd12y ago

Which is why, every time I travel, I end up with all the cards blocked. I hate you visa.

vidarh12y ago

My bank has done the same in the past, but now the offer an interface in online banking to inform them when I'm travelling.

It still annoys me though: Their fraud system keeps flagging regular transactions that I've done for similar amounts to the same companies, at the same times of month or year for years, yet when someone did two transfers of 3000 GBP each to a credit card account in a different bank that I've never dealt with before, in someone elses name, their fraud system did not trigger...

From my perspective, their blocks are nothing but a nuisance.

yummyfajitas12y ago

Call before you go and tell them you are traveling.

1 more reply

csixty412y ago

Nope. Once the credit card company authorizes the transaction, it's entirely up to the merchant whether to fulfill the transaction and close it out, or refund the customer. The credit card companies will do nothing to assist in making this decision.

But be sure you choose correctly, because they will take the entire payment away from you if there's a chargeback.

nandemo12y ago

Some processors return a numeric risk score, or a ternary result (OK,Review,Denied). Then the merchant might choose to review the transaction if the risk score is above a certain threshold (or the result is Review), then cancel or capture it accordingly.

For example, merchant's staff calls the shopper. This adds some cost, but for some merchants it might save money overall since chargebacks can be very costly (even if the merchant manages to challenge and win).

pbreit12y ago

Can't resist a shout out for a friend's new company that makes a lot of sense: http://chargeback.com (outsourced chargeback handling).

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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kevinconroy12y ago

mjwhansen12y ago

kevinconroy12y ago

bigd12y ago

Which is why, every time I travel, I end up with all the cards blocked. I hate you visa.

vidarh12y ago

My bank has done the same in the past, but now the offer an interface in online banking to inform them when I'm travelling.

From my perspective, their blocks are nothing but a nuisance.

yummyfajitas12y ago

Call before you go and tell them you are traveling.

1 more reply

csixty412y ago

But be sure you choose correctly, because they will take the entire payment away from you if there's a chargeback.

nandemo12y ago

pbreit12y ago

Can't resist a shout out for a friend's new company that makes a lot of sense: http://chargeback.com (outsourced chargeback handling).

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse