Transaction Monitoring - Best Practices

Our technology and architecture use hundreds of different data sources to manage risk at both the portfolio and account level and to drive real-time decisions for transaction monitoring.

To minimize potential transaction risks, use the following criteria to monitor transactions from merchants in real-time:

Create a blocked list of suspected bad sign-ups and create an allowed list of the VIP, fully verified sellers, and ensure new merchants are cross-referenced against the list.
Analyze the risk by checking seller’s ID, performance, chargeback rates, suspicious behavior, abrupt changes in the activity, Credit Card AVS mismatch, zip code to address mismatch, and so on.
Measure the risk periodically via key performance indicators (KPIs), which should include constantly monitor fraudulent cases and rates of Chargebacks and ACH returns.

Recommended Monitoring Rules

High Level Rule Set	Description
Transaction Amounts	Monitors transaction amount totals
Velocity Checks	Monitors the average number of transactions being processed
Decline frequency	Monitors the number of declines and how frequently they occur
Duplicative use of Cards	Monitors use of cards for duplicate transactions
Card Security (CVV) and Address (AVS) Checks	Monitors card CVV and billing address checks for transactions
Non-offsetting refunds	Monitors occurrences of refunds being issued where offsetting transaction funds are not available for the merchant
Maximum refunds	Monitors the number of full refunds issued from the merchant
Daily Disbursement Amounts	Monitors the amount disbursed to an entity daily
Daily/Monthly Processing Limits	Monitors the amounts processed against the limit set for daily and monthly totals

Recommended Monitoring Activities

Monitoring Activity	Description
BIN Concentration	Triggered by large influx of transactions via a single BIN
Explosive Growth/Bust Out	Triggered by an unusually large influx of transactions overall compared to previous averages for the merchant
Chargeback and Return Rates	Triggered by high amounts of chargebacks and returns under a merchant
Reactivate after Inactive Period	Triggered by merchants that have been inactive for an extended period of time (in other words, no transaction processing)
Card Testing	Triggered by imitation transactions to test card validity