By Melody Lashmar - In my search for any indication that someone has investigated this problem of Consumer Initiated Fraud, I came across a survey that was published in the Journal of Marketing in October 1978. The title of this publication is "Fraudulent Behavior of Consumers. The other side of fraud in the marketplace: consumer-initiated fraud against a business." This survey...
Recent Posts
By Melody Lashmar - The Invention of Lying is a great flick if you haven't seen it. I think it captures the reality of today’s payment landscape. Those that make the rules, do so in the perceived environment of the consumer being truthful.
By Melody Lashmar - Stop what you are doing and go to Google, type in adult merchant account and see what you get. You will be served up oodles of sites telling you they offer adult merchant accounts and are experts in it!! Seriously, how many of those names do you even recognize?
It seems that as the regulators and associations are clamping down on high-risk business, more and...
Westlake Village, CA - L3 Payments LLC, the leading choice for merchant accounts, ACH processing, call center services, risk management and consulting, has received a nomination for Billing Company of the Year – Merchant Services for the 2013 XBIZ Awards.
With every application for a new merchant account, the underwriter is going to pull a credit report on you. The importance of this credit report should not be ignored. Even if you have current processing history, great tax returns, lived in the same place for years, etc, a bad credit report will often be the difference in whether or not you will get your new merchant account.
By Melody Lashmar - 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. The consumer gets their money...
By Melody Lashmar-
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...
by Melody Lashmar -
Several months ago, I published an article describing the newly formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or CFPB. This group has been active now for over a year and their sole focus is on protecting consumers. They have a website which provides some useful information and guidance. The website is also a venue where consumers can easily file complaints...
By Melody Lashmar - There is a continued surge of activity within the banking industry in the name of UDAP. This surge of activity shows that the bank regulators have also been tasked with not only evaluating whether the bank they are examining is being neither unfair nor deceptive when providing services to their consumers, but these examiners have been mandated with protecting...
By Melody Lashmar - On October 27, 2011 at the Electronic Transaction Authority’s (ETA) Compliance Day in Chicago, a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) official told attendees that the government has formed a task force to monitor third-party payment-services providers. The stated goal is to prevent fraudulent merchants from obtaining merchant accounts and to shut down such merchants...
