Solidgate helps merchants grow across global digital markets, but with that growth comes the need to manage disputes, reduce chargebacks and protect revenue at scale. If a cardholder doesn't recognize a transaction on their credit card statement, they’ll likely contact their bank to dispute it. Without enough transaction detail, disputes like these can become chargebacks. And while many cardholders who dispute a transaction genuinely don't recognize it, others may be aiming to commit friendly fraud or first-party misuse when a customer disputes a card transaction despite having received the goods or services. The Merchant Risk Council estimates that friendly fraud represents 20% of all disputes globally,¹ so it's an issue merchants need to address.

For businesses operating in eCommerce, subscriptions, SaaS and digital goods, chargebacks relating to card-not-present (CNP) transactions can represent a significant threat to revenue. Chargebacks take time and effort to manage and can erode revenue streams. What's more, businesses with an elevated chargeback volume could face penalties from payment processors and card networks.

Solidgate integrated powerful solutions from Visa to help merchants improve dispute and chargeback management through enhanced prevention, deflection and resolution.

The prevention solution from Visa, Order Insight, operates in the Visa Dispute Opportunity Zone, harnessing the power of data to promote transaction transparency to issuers, merchants and cardholders. If a cardholder contacts their bank to inquire about a transaction made with a merchant using Solidgate, the agent can retrieve and share transaction details directly from the merchant to help the cardholder recognize the purchase to clear up confusion.

Order Insight has a feature called Systematic Dispute Deflection, which leverages Compelling Evidence 3.0 (CE3.0) to provide hands-off pre-dispute protection that works with the merchant's system to meet data quality standards, formatting requirements and response SLAs. Using consistent CE3.0 datapoints across both the disputed and historical transactions, the dispute request can be verified as legitimate and blocked from moving forward. In the past, merchants typically had to wait for a dispute to be filed before tackling an instance of friendly fraud. Once integrated, CE3.0 shifts how merchants handle this type of fraud by tracking, in real-time, critical data points from previous legitimate transactions, such as: 

• Device IDs
• IP addresses
• Login credentials

Solidgate also deployed Visa Rapid Dispute Resolution (RDR) to help merchants stop legitimate refund claims from becoming chargebacks by automatically refunding cardholders in the pre-dispute stage. Using merchant-customized parameters, RDR's decision engine determines whether a refund is warranted and, if so, initiates an automated credit on Visa transactions. Merchants can customize RDR's parameters to meet their business needs based on analysis of previous chargebacks, identification of patterns and other relevant criteria. For example, a merchant might decide that disputes worth less than $40 will always be automatically refunded as they don't justify the time and cost of representment. Solidgate advises its merchants to keep track of the refund rate and revise their parameters as needed.

Solidgate has seen firsthand how CE3.0 can deliver significant value to its merchants. Over the past year, the implementation of CE3.0 has helped save $10M in revenue by verifying legitimate transactions before a single chargeback was filed.²

For businesses handling high transaction volumes and recurring payments (such as digital goods, subscriptions, SaaS and eCommerce), this can represent a significant win. CE3.0 provides merchants with automated protection designed to help reduce revenue losses. Solidgate reports that CE3.0 has helped its merchants save up to 15% of lost revenue,² freeing up their teams to focus on growth.

Using CE3.0 to deflect friendly fraud helps merchants avoid the cost and effort of dealing with potential chargebacks as well as the financial losses associated with any unwarranted refunds.

Beyond reducing chargeback fees, CE3.0 helps merchants: 

• Protect their revenue streams
• Reduce the time and resources needed to manage disputes and recover from their fallout
• Lower the long-term costs of fraud

Building on pre-dispute protection with CE3.0, RDR helps streamline the dispute resolution process for merchants by reducing the time and effort involved. Merchants have full visibility of the process, helping them manage their resources and plan accordingly. Once a dispute has been resolved by a credit, it's no longer possible to initiate a chargeback, so merchants avoid the associated chargeback fees and potential issues with their payment processor.

Through Solidgate’s Verifi RDR Decision API, merchants have seen $20-$50 in dispute processing fee savings per case.³ And RDR enhances customer experience, as promptly addressing and resolving legitimate refund claims can boost customer satisfaction and loyalty.