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...
by Melody Lashmar - 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...
By Melody Lashmar - The above title is extremely fitting today in banking. The endless closing down of banks, the continued shutting down of business checking accounts for 5967-type merchants and the unrelenting pressure for banks not to process for 5967-type merchants demonstrates the applicability of this statement.
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.
By Melody Lashmar - You might wonder why you can’t simply open a Merchant Account in whatever country you like. In a nutshell, it’s because there is a concept of Cross Border Acquiring that endeavors to protect all the parties in the credit card processing transaction.
The Internet was a catalyst in the concept of doing business outside of your regular geographical footprint. The...
By Melody Lashmar - This article was originally published in June of 2011 but it is worth reviewing. Looking back you can see that there have been no additional banks in the US that have started registered high-risk merchant processing and the others that still participate have become very taxing in their requirements to board this merchant type.
Gone are the days of convincing...
by Melody Lashmar -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...
