Use Case: Automate Risk Decisions for Groups

You can automate risk decisions for merchant groups to mitigate risk for actions that occur within the specific group. This is an efficient way to group higher-risk merchants and apply stricter risk criteria that won’t apply to other merchants in your portfolio. This tutorial shows you how to use decisions to automate risk review and actions at a merchant group level.

Audience: Partner

Create Risk Decisions for a Merchant Group

Complete all steps in the following sections to automate actions taken based on risk-based behaviors that occur within a group.

Prerequisites

Before attempting this tutorial, you must:

• Meet the general prerequisites described in Get Started with Use Case Tutorials.

Access the Group Profile

1. Click Groups in the left navigation under the Management category to open the Groups page.

2. Locate the group in the table and select any information in the table row to open the Group Profile page.

Add a Decision to the Group Profile

1. Click the Decisions tab on the left side of the page.

2. Click Add Decision in the upper-right corner.

3. Select a decision type from the dropdown menu:

   • Consumer Transaction Risk: Risk behaviors related to specific consumer transactions.

   • Merchant Transaction Risk: Risk behaviors related to an overall merchant.

   • Boarding: Risk behaviors related to merchant boarding.

   • Refunds: Risk behaviors related to merchant refund issuance.

   • Watchlists: Risk behaviors related to OFAC watchlist and other custom watchlist configurations.

4. Select a decision for the related decision type from the dropdown menu.

5. Click Continue to proceed.

Configure the Decision Details

1. After setting your decision type and decision, input or select the value.

2. Select the action from the Take this Action dropdown menu:

   • Block Authorization: Indicates that the specific conditions have not been met and the transaction status will be Failed

   • Send Funds to Reserve: Indicates that a merchant has been flagged above a specific threshold or percentage and will automatically create a reserve

   • Hold for Manual Review: Indicates unclear or insufficient data submitted from merchants during boarding or flagged transactions processed or attempted by the merchant

3. (Optional) Select the user you want the action to be assigned to specifically.

4. Add any remaining decision rule criteria.

5. (Optional) For some decision types, you can link additional decisions within.

6. Click Continue to complete the decision creation.

Result: The decision is now created for the group and will apply automated risk decisions in the determined circumstances.

Next Steps

After creating your automated risk decision for your group, review the following guides for related issues:

• Hold a Transaction to Respond to Suspicious Activity: Manually create holds on transactions that are suspicious or otherwise high-risk.

• Hold a Merchant Boarding to Perform a Review: Place a new merchant’s boarding status to Manual Review to perform a risk review before boarding.

• Automate Risk Review with Policies: Use the policies feature to automate future transaction holds or merchant boarding reviews with different risk criteria.

Additionally, view the following content in the Risk and Compliance Guide:

• Read Partner Transaction Monitoring Best Practices for guidance on identifying transaction risks.

• See the Merchant Monitoring Risk Guide for steps to mitigate risks associated with merchants' payment transactions and other activities.

• Read Merchant Onboarding Risk Best Practices for guidance on identifying merchant boarding risks.

• Read the Merchant Monitoring Risk Guide for steps to mitigate risks associated with boarding merchants.