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Articles by Melody L

opinion

Online Billing: More Monitoring at the Transaction Level

Operation Choke Point and increased pressure by bank regulators on financial Institutions to identify and eliminate merchant fraud has certainly increased the monitoring efforts by banks regarding their payment services. Under Operation Choke Point, financial institutions, ISOs and IPSPs are being held liable and accountable for their merchants’ fraudulent activities.

Melody L ·
opinion

What Regulators Are Saying About Bitcoin

Bitcoin has certainly been an interesting phenomenon to watch over the last few weeks. We’ve had bankruptcies, suicides, arrests, thefts, marketing, adoption by retailers, potential identification of the creator and discussions at all levels of government. It seems this recent interval has contained all the makings of a good mini-series.

Melody L ·
opinion

Online Billing: Operation Choke Point

The phrase “Operation Choke Point” conjures up many images and is representative of the spirit in which the authorities are using their power to target the providers within the payment industry.

Melody L ·
opinion

What Is a Merchant to Do?

The Ivory Tower of Officialdom is at it again. They have spent time and resources on developing ways to reduce fraud in their network and they now want people’s opinions on their solution. The current proposed solution is ... wait for it ... to do more of the same!

Melody L ·
opinion

Online Billing: The ACH Option

Have you ever stood at a checkout line, swiped your card of choice and then were told that it failed? When that happens, what is your next move? Many of us will swipe the card again thinking that the result was a fluke the first time but the next time it will be fine.

Melody L ·
opinion

Billing: Underwriting Inconsistencies

Do you ever wonder why your experience can be so different when working towards the same goal with two different financial partners?

Melody L ·
opinion

Online Billing: Staying Compliant

Things have been going along just fine, but seemingly out of nowhere, you are getting questions on your merchant processing. Technically you are compliant with the payment association rules, so why all these questions? It seems that the things you used to do are now not accepted and things that were forbidden are now allowed again. And round and round we go. Perhaps the activities are best explained by some of the information provided in this article.

Melody L ·
opinion

Cogs of Transactions

It’s that time of the month again … I get cranky and tired and irritated. I know what you are thinking and I assure you, it’s not hormonal. It’s the result of the monthly roundtable call I participate in where I get updated on many of the ridiculous, and often government-funded, attacks on merchants and third-party processors. To be fair, I will agree that not all the actions are ridiculous.

Melody L ·
opinion

Online Consumer Support

Quickly! Can you find your customer support number? How about an email address? Can you navigate your website to find the information you would need to question a transaction or cancel a membership or seek a refund?

Melody L ·
opinion

A Better Mousetrap

Data, Analytics, Cross Platform Validations, Mobile. These disparate areas are all converging in the effort to thwart fraudsters and the transactions which they initiate.

Melody L ·
opinion

Validate Them — Current Bank Account Validation Methods

NACHA recently published a survey to explore the various methods they believe to be common methods of bank account validation for transactions running through their network. They provided some definitions and methods as reiterated below:

Melody L ·
opinion

Potentially Simple Solutions for Credit Card Fraud

Over the last few months I have been investigating and writing about consumer initiated fraud. I have been defining the issue, giving recent examples of the issue, providing data about the issue and demonstrating that it is a known issue and has been for quite some time.

Melody L ·
opinion

Invention of Lying

The Invention of Lying: ”It’s a great flick if you haven’t seen it. I think it captures the reality of today’s payment landscape. Those who make the rules, do so in the perceived environment of the consumer being truthful.

Melody L ·
opinion

Consumer Accountability

It is well known by everyone, including consumers, that consumers bear no responsibility for protecting their information from others. If their information is used, and they decide that they no longer want it to be used, then they merely have to dial up their bank and say, “I did not authorize this transaction.” Very simple indeed.

Melody L ·
opinion

Watching a Watchdog

Several months ago, I published an article describing the newly formed federal agency Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB. This group has been active now for more than a year and their sole focus is on protecting consumers. They have a website that provides some useful information and guidance. The website is also a venue where consumers can easily file complaints against merchants and financial institutions.

Melody L ·
opinion

Financial Risk of a Merchant Account

It became evident that the chain of financial responsibility contingent with offering and gaining a merchant account is grossly misunderstood. It was during a panel discussion in Europe that the comment was made to one of the panelists stating that they, unlike an aggregator, do not take any financial risk. Although this is a common assumption, it is inaccurate and this column will explain why.

Melody L ·
opinion

Billing: Winds of Change

The European shows were excellent. I had the pleasure of speaking with businesses from all over the world, with a heavy European concentration. It was great to hear other people’s perspectives on the business in general, and their specific interests as they relate to the current environment in particular.

Melody L ·
opinion

Online Billing - Due Diligence

Web traffic is an integral part of the e-commerce merchant’s customer acquisition strategy. So much so, in fact, that typically anyone can sign up as an affiliate online and begin sending traffic to their new partner very quickly. Affiliates are so vital to merchants that there are: job positions for Affiliate Managers; companies created to simply manage the affiliate network for their content sites; and numerous software companies whose purpose is to track affiliate traffic and to pay them properly for the business they have provided.

Melody L ·
opinion

When the Best Defense Is a Good Offense

A reality today is that consumers will chargeback transactions they knowingly authorized. Some experts call this “Friendly Fraud” others call it “Liar Buyer”; either way it is happening everyday. In a Card Not Present business the question is, “What, if anything, should a merchant do about a chargeback?” Is this something the merchant should dispute or is it something the merchant should simply accept as the cost of doing business?

Melody L ·
opinion

Chargebacks: Hooray for Mastercard

Master-Card has recently published a revision of its standards for the Excessive Chargeback Program that will go into effect on Aug. 15. In plain English, that means that the chargeback ratios at which your MasterCard account is evaluated at have been modified.

Melody L ·
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