“Kount, an Equifax® (NYSE: EFX) company, and a leader in digital identity trust and fraud prevention, today announced a new joint offering of two award-winning products from Ethoca , a Mastercard Company. Ethoca Alerts and Consumer ClarityTM are being delivered as part of the Kount Dispute and Chargeback Management Solution, a comprehensive, post-authorization solution that integrates best-in-class fraud and customer dispute alert systems with in-depth transaction details and industry-leading AI-driven fraud prevention.”

“Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. may be making significant progress in their bid to simplify and speed their aged and cumbersome chargeback processes through automation, rules changes, and some key acquisitions, experts contend. The biggest gains in chargeback efficiency are expected to come when Visa and Mastercard launch real-time communications between card issuers and merchants. For Mastercard, that capability is expected to come through Ethoca Inc., a global network with more than 6,500 merchants and more than 4,000 card issuers. Mastercard acquired Ethoca in March .”

“Payments processing company Stripe is now offering a chargeback protection service to prevent businesses from incurring costs from fraud disputes. Built on Stripe’s machine learning-based fraud prevention tool Radar, the chargeback service offers automatic reimbursement for the cost of a disputed charge and any associated fees.”

“Among the many changes for managing Visa chargebacks is the requirement to acknowledge them, Dakshina said. Only 12% of merchants were aware of the requirement, with 78% unaware. Ten percent did not respond to the question. Merchants can dispute or accept a chargeback. The lack of awareness carries a price, too. Dakshina said merchants are charged between 75 cents and $2.50 per unacknowledged chargeback, and some processors may mark up that fee. Most merchants—84%—were not aware of this fee.”

“Visa Inc. is altering its chargeback-resolution program to condense the reason codes into four categories, amend the time to resolve a disputed transaction, and make other changes. According to data on a Chase Paymentech site, the changes are set to go into effect April 15 because the card brand wants to migrate from a “litigation-based model to a liability-assignment model,” the site notes.”

“The rising problem of e-commerce fraud and related issues like false declines is prompting anti-fraud software companies to roll out solutions. On Thursday, Ethoca Inc. launched a new service with three lines of defense that the Toronto-based company says can potentially eliminate 90% of e-commerce chargebacks. Ethoca’s Integrated Solution Suite includes its established product, Ethoca Alerts, along with a new product called Ethoca Eliminator. The third component is Enhanced Representments.”