It’s nothing more than additional steps.
It’s a fast track to shopping cart abandonment.
I’ll take my chances.
Not all merchants like the idea of having a 3D secure e-commerce merchant account, even though we’ve preached for it ad nauseam, for any or all of the above reasons. We understand the resistance. Since 3D secure 2.0 was released, however, we’re big fans of it despite the extra step(s) and the extra seconds plied on to the online checkout experience. In the current climate, consumers and merchants need additional security.
Even though most of our merchant partners prefer a non-3D secure merchant account, we always offer that option. We trust they have other security protocol in place (we hope anyway), such as a machine learning or AI scheme.
Not all merchants are able to afford such security measures and need to rely on themselves to conduct manual reviews. To that, we offer four quick signs that may not necessarily indicate a fraudulent transaction, but should signal merchants to take a further look at the details.
The originating country
Instabill provides e-commerce merchant account solutions for merchants worldwide. The last thing we wish to do is to insult or stereotype certain countries or regions of the world. It is a fact, however, that fraudulent activity stems from more places than others (we’re certain the U.S. has its share of operational cells). Without mentioning specific countries, it is well documented that fraud and hacking are major industries in locales such as Eastern Europe, the Far East and Southeast Asia as well as certain African nations.
Merchants, for example, in the U.S., U.K. or Europe, who have a domestic e-commerce merchant account, should simply give more attention to purchase attempts from outside of their regions.
Device recognition
If the order is coming from a repeat customer, whose IP address is already in your database and recognized, then we emphatically say proceed with it. If the order is a first, further examining is recommended with more validation checks, including the aforementioned originating country as well as the billing and shipping address — whether the IP matches the location of the order.
Amount/size of the order
Taking into account device recognition and originating country…
Depending on the product or service a merchant is selling, a merchant can gauge order sizes that are common, small and large. When a massive order comes in, however, it should sound alarm bells. Factoring in device recognition and even the originating location helps in the decision to either proceed with or decline the order.
One of our online merchant partners who ships frozen and live seafood in the U.S., will occasionally receive outlandishly large orders from first-time ‘customers.’ He’ll research the order further, with the use of geolocation, an e-mail check and sometimes even a phone call to ascertain the legitimacy of the ‘customer.’ At times, he’ll even strike up a conversation with him/her, and even ask about the weather while looking at the current conditions online to certify the ‘customer’ is where he/she claims to be.
Many transactions, short time frame
This is a major indicator that the ‘customer’ is in possession of stolen credit card information for more than one consumer and is making the most of a short window to capitalize. There are several other red flags that support that order is bogus that merchants should examine:
- IP address/geolocation: If the IP address from the orders is from the same region, it is likely fraud.
- Time of day: Regarding those areas we mentioned in which fraud is rife, it is important to note the time of day the orders arrived.
- New ‘customer’: More evidence that an online criminal is plying his/her trade.
E-commerce merchant account options: high and low risk
Having been in business since 2001, Instabill has built a large, diverse base of industry types — from online pharmaceuticals to trucking logistics, CBD to multilevel marketing — for which it offers e-commerce merchant account solutions. Not only do we have the domestic, international and offshore banking partners to get approvals for high risk and hard-to-place merchants, we offer one-on-one support at 1-800-530-2444.
We prefer to start the process with a phone conversation. Find out your solutions today.
