2021 Paladin Vendor Report | Payment Systems

Your compass in a complicated payment landscape.

Every day at Paladin Group, we’re in the thick of the fast-paced world of fraud solutions. While many readers may be familiar with our unprecedented look at fraud mitigation solution providers, we know many also share an interest in payment management as well.

For this reason, we’ve partnered with Retail Payments Global Consulting (RPGC) industry experts in technological and operational elements of payment acceptance. Together we’ve compiled yet another unprecedented Paladin Vendor Report: this time, a payments version. It offers a better view into how merchants can manage cost, acceptance rates, and customer experience related to payments in an omnichannel, card-not-present (CNP) world.

We focused on several key areas during the discovery process. (Not all are applicable to every vendor, but
for consistency, we examined each of the following wherever relevant.)

FUNCTIONAL ARCHITECTURE
What the platform’s capabilities are such as transaction types and valueadded services.

TECHNOLOGY
The platform’s physical attributes such as technologies used, locations, and APIs.

CUSTOMER SUPPORT
What self-service tools and account management availability augument the platform.

PRICING MODEL
Usage of the platform is typically billed in either a per transaction, subscription, or licensee fee.

2021 Paladin Vendor Report - Payment Systems Intro

Paladin focused on several key areas during the discovery process.

Product

The vendor’s current functionality

Services

Available offerings to help merchants during integration and throughout their client lifecycle, including reporting

Business Development

Current partnerships and channels for direct and indirect customers

Marketing

The verticals vendors are focusing on and messaging

Sales

A breakdown of market segments

Technology

How the product works from a technical perspective
Paladin Vendor Report - Payment Systems Sample
Together, we can help service providers and merchants do a better, more well-informed job mitigating the risks that come with accepting payments in an omni-channel, card-not-present (CNP) world.

The Paladin Vendor Report | Payment Systems: in partnership with the Merchant Risk Council

We are proud to continue our a partnership with the Merchant Risk Council (MRC) in publishing and distributing this report. The MRC provides its members with useful tools and believes that this will be a valuable resource for them. MRC members can download the report at a greatly reduced cost.

If you’re not a current member of the MRC, please visit the site and register to receive this special offer.

Participating Vendors

“We are using them as a risk-modeling tool within our current third-party platform. They built us a custom model that provides numeric scoring to make quicker decisions. Their plug-and-play approach is a nice feature, as well as being able to populate whatever we want to appear on the agent screen. The people there are great, and they have data gurus building models. What I really like is that they think from the client perspective as well as the data perspective. I am very impressed with their knowledge as well as their well-rounded approach.”

eBureau

“Our company has been working with eBureau for about 10 years, and about four years ago, we did a proof-of-concept on our .com space using their scoring model. It proved out very well, and now we have five specific models with them for day-to-day, specific lines of business and a holiday model. They replaced a model we were using with a different third party, and we have these current models implemented into our third-party fraud platform. The models are pretty close directionally to our expectations. eBureau account management has been responsive and supportive of our needs and requests. They were willing to bring data to our company for risk mitigation where others wouldn’t.”

eBureau

“We implemented the chargeback tool in 2012, three years after we started working with the Interceptas Platform. We decided to work with Accertify because we used to manually download chargebacks, manually perform research, and track our chargebacks and re-presentments. Now with Accertify, we automatically import chargebacks inquiries from our credit card processor and PayPal. This allows us to work them within Accertify’s platform and associate these inquiries to the original order. We quickly respond with transaction details and proof of delivery on all initial inquiries, reducing secondary inquires. Integration was as promised with no issues, and we are very happy with the product, ROI, and relationship with Accertify. We can work 30 chargebacks per rep per hour. We also just recently extended our contract to a longer term with them. “

Accertify Chargeback Management

“We have been using the chargeback platform for over a year and a half. We really like the platform, especially since it’s directly integrated into Accertify’s fraud prevention platform. We like how the system corrals the chargebacks by reason code/type and has the requirements built into the system as to what attachments it needs to retrieve, and it does that. We had the typical implementation bumps but they were small and didn’t cause us any real issues. We love that there is not a separate portal to get the documentation and the data. We love that it is all centralized. The reporting is great. It really gives us a real-time understanding of how we are performing. That data gets fed directly into the fraud prevention tool and helps us prevent fraud."

Accertify Chargeback Management

“We’ve been working with them for over seven years now. We use Interceptas for both for fraud prevention and CBs. Our integration was a great experience, and the performance since then has exceeded our expectations. The reporting is fine. People have said their reporting is a weakness, but it’s not a weakness to us, as we have gotten everything we needed. Being a managed services client, we get great reporting. We have worked with every part of their organization and it’s been great. They have delivered everything we expected and more, including saving us millions of dollars over the years. We don’t feel like a customer, but rather like we’re on a team with Accertify.”

Accertify Fraud Management

“We’ve been working with Accertify for a little over six months. We brought them in to replace another third-party fraud platform we were dissatisfied with. Our integration with Accertify went well, and we were able to cut over without having to go back or have any emergency adjustments. Accertify is very thorough in the discovery process.  While our chargeback rates are close to where they were with our prior platform, we have made huge strides in reducing our false positives. Even though our review rates are similar, the fraud we are preventing in that review population is greater, and again we have seen a very nice lift in the reduction of false positives. I love the reporting--they have great reports for analyzing rules performance and the dashboard up to the minute. The data extract tool allows me to pull almost anything that’s in the production database, up to a thirty-day period. Spin the data to your heart’s content. I love the fact that there is so much flexibility with Accertify--including the services can be chosen, the scoring, professional services, managed services and GBM capabilities.”

Accertify Chargeback Management

“We have been working with Cardinal’s consumer authentication product for five years now. We use them almost 100 percent in the US and will be relying on their authentication product heavily as we expand internationally. Our client management experience with Cardinal is great, especially with the recent change to our current client manager. She did a ton of work related to our international expansion and pointed out specific information for new country growth. We have never had any system issues with Cardinal, and I really never think about that with Cardinal. We are extremely happy with the product and relationship.”

CardinalCommerce

“We have been working with them for over seven years and looking to expand the utilization of the consumer authentication product. The reason for expansion is due to the feedback and analysis we received from our current client manager about how expanding the product utilization would positively impact our business. We have not experienced any system-related issue on the Cardinal side, but we have had issues internally that have impacted our performance with them. They came onsite, understood the issues, and worked with us to correct them. The relationship has been very good.”

CardinalCommerce

“Been working with Kount for six or seven years for our e-commerce selling digital goods portfolio. We are currently expanding our usage of Kount into other e-commerce sites we own, and the integration is going well. The experience with Kount has been great.  Client management has been great. We just got switched over to a regular client manager and so far he has been great with response times and very polite. Never takes more than an hour to get a reply.  I really like the reporting they have via datamart. There have been no major system downtime issues, and Kount always communicates to us prior to maintenance periods.”

Kount

“We have been working with Kount since 2011. We use Kount complete on our members site and our checkout pages. We looked at Kount Access but instead used Kount Complete on a couple of pages, looking at password resets and royalty payouts.  I was here when we integrated Kount, and it went as expected. One of the key reasons we selected them was due to lead time for implementation. We were up and running within two weeks. Our performance with them has been fantastic.  Our chargeback rates are very low. We have recently been transitioned to a new account rep, and we are waiting to see if he is as responsive as the service we were getting before. We did receive an unexpected benefit of using Kount’s reporting structure: it gave us new insight about our overall business, not just fraud.  Every once in a while, we get an email about a system “blip” but it’s never impacted us. They are a very solid group of people, always happy to answer questions and help out.”

Kount

“While we do focus on chargeback and fraud performance as well as manual review rate, our primary focus is more heavily weighted toward customer experience. Decision Manager helps us manage that experience.”

CyberSource

“The rule and model management through Decision Manager allows us to manage risk across multiple sites and web properties extremely well. Further, the Decision Manager’s replay functions allow us to manage frequent, real-time updates to the system during peak season.”

CyberSource

“We have been working with Ethoca for two and a half years now. We use it as our early fraud alerts safety net. They alert us to transactions that we didn’t know were fraud and had essentially slipped through the net of the fraud-detection platform. Ethoca also really gives us the ability to stop the transaction in real-time, allowing us to get our asset back. We then take the data and use the information to populate back into our fraud risk tool. It also helps us with law enforcement to take actions without any repercussions as the alerts are confirmed fraud. This was something that was long overdue in the fraud-prevention industry, from my perspective. For me, it is a mandatory product to have and use. Our account manager is the best I have ever worked with. I would say I am a real advocate for their product, and what it offers as it has been beyond my expectations. The savings have been phenomenal.”

Ethoca

“We have been working with Ethoca for three years. We get a couple of different things from working with them, but the most value is the early warning detection system it has created for us. Their product really gives us an easy way of determining if our fraud models are working as determined. We can see chargebacks within 60 minutes after the order was placed. We have a very strong seamless integration into Kount, and that lets us determine if the order passed the fraud model. Once an order drops for fulfillment, it happens really fast, but we can usually stop it with the carrier once it’s shipped.  From a value proposition perspective, the cost relative to the value is above average. The level of detail and feedback we get from the product is amazing. I see the long-term relationship being fruitful. Relative to the value the service gives, the cost is a no-brainer, especially if using a platform that is integrated with Ethoca.”

Ethoca

“We have been using iovation for six years. We are using them in a real-time check within our online platform at login, order placement, and card activation on our website. I was there for the integration and it went as promised, no issues.  One time we had a system issue that was primarily our fault after a release. iovation did a great job to partner with us and look at the logs and find the issue. From a client management perspective, we have challenged them on data. I like to see performance and see statistics, and that wasn’t really there when we started working with iovation. They have resolved those issues and are always responsive and open to feedback, and they partner with us with any concerns or ideas we have. I like that they moved the reporting online and that it’s not delivered via email. It eliminated the ability for it to be forwarded by those receiving them and limited control. We literally have had no system downtime issues at all.  Our overall relationship has always been a good one with iovation. They are always engaged, and you can tell because their relationships with their clients are important to them.”

iovation

“We have been in production and working with iovation since April of this year. We have them on all of our checkout pages across our card-not-present environment. Integration went very smooth, which is surprising as we expected issues to occur based on prior experiences with other vendors. The only hiccups were on our side. We are happy as there have been no system issues and we haven’t seen any latency issues where we have them integrated. Our experience with client management has been very good. Initially we had an issue with our first client manager, but it was rectified immediately and we couldn’t be happier. We are thrilled to be working with them. We have maxed out the rules we can utilize, and the amount of data we can load causes some hindrances. Overall, we went in knowing how we wanted to utilize their product and we are thrilled that we can screen everything for fraud.”

iovation

“We’ve been working with MaxMind for a few years. We use their GeoIP Database and Proxy Detection application programming interface. The integration was relatively straightforward. We have no complaints at all, as the files are delivered on time. In the US, quality of data is good, but the international data granularity is not the same--but this isn’t surprising. They are certainly a leader in the IP intelligence space vs. their competition. They are very responsive from a support needs perspective, even though support is not usually needed from our perspective. MaxMind’s Proxy Detection product is more predictive than the competition.”

MaxMind

“We’ve been working with MaxMind since 2011. We use the minFraud and GeoIP-based product, and we have it incorporated into our in-house fraud platform. We like it, as there is a cost benefit perspective--we get a lot of value for both minFraud and GeoIP. We have had no downtime-related issues for several years. We appreciate the MaxMind team and feel there is more of a personal relationship, and not a sales targeted relationship. They take the time to know you and your business.  Their response time via a direct email has been excellent; it’s not like sending a ticket and being treated like a number."

MaxMind

(NuData) allows us to understand what customers are doing before we take their money.  We can establish a baseline of what were seeing and introduce or remove friction points based on this intelligence.”

NuData

“(NuData) allows us to break down friction for good users while preventing the fraud.  Treat good customers with white gloves and bad customers like criminals.”

NuData

“(NuData) allows us to break down friction for good users while preventing the fraud.  Treat good customers with white gloves and bad customers like criminals.”

NuData

“We’ve been working with them for four months. Earlier this year, we opened up four additional ecommerce storefronts and warehouses. We were working with another vendor in this space who offered chargeback guarantees, but left them because their process for verifying orders was to ask our customers for an email containing photos of their credit card (with some numbers obscured) and their driver’s licenses. This made no sense in an ecommerce environment."

Riskified

"Our web payment platform provider made the recommendation to try Riskified. Most of our orders are decisioned in three to four minutes (there are some longer decisioning times due to additional analysis).  If there is verification or research, Riskified people do the verification process. We want to focus on building great products and service, and not managing risk. Their dashboard, reporting, and data insights have been great. I give Riskified two thumbs up! Their customer service team and everyone there is very engaged in what they are doing and building out. The relationship has been great.”

Riskified

“I have been working with them for two years. We have all our transactions going to them, and they decide what to approve and decline. We only do manual review on the ones they decline, and resubmit based on additional information we find. If they then approve it, we get the chargeback guarantee as well. It helps because they will see continued improvement in the model over chargeback rates. They work to re-deploy new models over time and our chargeback rates are going down."

Signifyd

“We measure them on fundamental fraud prevention and their performance has been solid. When looking at the amount of declined transactions and then measuring false positives, they are very low overall as a percentage. We get ‘white glove’ treatment with Signifyd. We don’t normally have any issues, but if we do, things get resolved immediately. As far as reporting goes, they really don’t have a reporting UI and we don’t really rely on external reporting. They have shown us a solid fraud performance and clear ROI.”

Signifyd

“They really Helped our bottom line. Since 2006, we’ve been building fraud prevention programs. We’ve used many tools and ‘partial solutions’ but are sick of ultimate responsibility. The ClearSale team really understand of what it means to be in ecommerce."

ClearSale

“Overall (the integration) has been great. They really worked with us and gave suggestions, and several were implemented. We experienced a few bumps during the testing period, but they were easily resolved and relatively pain-free.”

ClearSale

“We’ve been working with them for five years plus, but I have been working with them for a year and a half.  We are using FraudNet and are potentially talking about using Crosscore. I think the product has done well for us.  The overall support we get from Experian has been great.  We do a lot of custom reporting and in-house analysis from the data we get from Experian upon request. Over the last 18 months, reporting is getting better. Custom reporting was limited in FraudNet, but earlier this year, Experian added new fields which has been a big help. There is a limit of 50k events for which we can directly query data so anything over that we need to submit a request. From a company perspective, we have been happy as we have seen massive improvement since implementing FraudNet. We are in a way better place than 4-5 years ago with fraud due to FraudNet.”

Experian

“We started working with them in 2009 for our .com business. We incorporated them into our other sales channels about a year and a half ago. Both integrations were as planned.  The first one was as planned and on budget. The second one was good as well but took a little longer due to our business complexity. We are ecstatic with the product and relationship and even though Experian bought 41st, we haven’t experienced any changes. We are still getting the ‘white glove treatment’ we have always gotten.  Reporting used to be an issue, but since their release of FraudNet 5.0 it is 1,000 percent better. I could not speak more highly of the relationship we have with them and the FraudNet product.”

Experian

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