Chargebacks are the bane of a business owner’s existence. This is when they have to offer a refund on a card not present transaction that turned out to be fraudulent or at least disputed. As a business owner, you want to avoid chargebacks at all costs. It is always a loss for the business owner because they lose the product as well as the money paid for it. If you are a business owner, then you know chargebacks can do a lot of damage.
The biggest problem with buying online, is the possibility of someone getting your information. There are a lot of people who don’t take very good care of their credit cards while shopping online. They tend to just use it at any site, not paying attention if it’s legitimate or not because after all, it’s just a credit card. Then their information gets stolen and the thief comes to your site to use the card and buy things. Well, here are a few ways to avoid fraud in your business so that you can also avoid the dreaded chargebacks that come from it.
Secure Payment Processing
This really should be your number one priority when opening an online business. Any business really, should ensure a secure payment system so that customers don’t have to worry about getting their information stolen. There are secure payment processing tools that are available to you. You can get software that offers guaranteed security and protects the consumer and the business owner against fraud. If you do the research and look into these then you should be able to find one that is suitable for your company.
Ability to Recognize
You should train yourself and your employees to be able to recognize fraud. Things like, when a customer usually buys the same thing all the time but then one day strays from their regular pattern or a free shipping option that was ignored and expensive priority shipping was chosen instead are both significant indications of possible fraud. Bigger companies have entire departments dedicated to looking for instances like these. If you cannot afford that, you should at least make sure that you are on the look out for them and that your employees always have a trained eye to catch something like this before it gets too far.
Requirements to Validate
When something like the example earlier of a regular customer straying from pattern happens, your workers should be required to contact the consumer and validate the order. It may be perfectly legitimate but it may not be and either way, your customer will appreciate you being pro active and looking into it for them. It will make them feel secure and protected by you which will keep them coming back. There should also be a requirement to validate credit cards and debit cards with the three digit code on the back of the card and the billing address and phone number. Should any of these be given incorrectly, the consumer should be contacted in order to let them know that someone is trying to use their card.
Option to Create Passwords
For regular customers, you should offer the option to create a password to cover their account and their card. This is an extra layer of protection for regular clients. While new customers may not be able to be covered like this for their first purchase, it will be an incentive to come back again. Visa and MasterCard and others often offer this as a service to their clients so that any time they try to use these cards online they have to input the password. This is something that you should suggest to your clients to avoid any fraudulent activity happening at your site. It’s one of the most secure ways to protect clients. Even if a criminal has the card in hand, chances are they don’t know the password that is associated with it. Plus, just from looking at the card, they won’t be able to tell that they need to know a password so you may be able to catch them red handed.
Protection should always be the priority. Safety and security are the main concerns of consumers so they should also be yours.
