For petroleum marketers, the April 17, 2021, Outdoor EMV liability shift has come and gone, but how has the shift impacted chargebacks at sites? Petroleum marketers have reported an influx of incorrect chargebacks flowing through, citing three primary aberrations: mobile transactions showing chargeback reasons related to EMV transactions, reason codes related to goods and services not received on fuel transactions (which is tough to pull off!), and EMV related chargebacks with transaction dates prior to April 17.
Monitoring and responding to chargebacks can be an arduous task. Danny Omiliak, Senior Consultant at W. Capra Consulting Group, recommends a proactive and time sensitive approach. “Since chargebacks can be reported up to 120 days following the transaction date, proactively monitoring your data can help to identify spikes in transaction counts or types of transactions that may be harbingers to a flow of chargebacks in your not-too-distant future. A fraudster may have already spent thousands of dollars at your site by the time the first chargeback notice has arrived to you,” Omiliak advised.
“Whatever amount may have been budgeted per site for liability in a post EMV-shift world, that budget likely did not include fighting and responding to the massive amount of invalid chargebacks sites are seeing,” Nathan Rao, Consultant at W. Capra, added. “Being able to clearly articulate, with supporting data, to card issuers what chargebacks have not been presented properly and why, will help you avoid the ‘death by a thousand paper cuts’ of responding to each and every notice individually.”
One additional proactive measure that merchants can implement now is to validate that all sites that you expect to be processing EMV transactions are properly processing EMV transactions. “If even one pump at a site is not properly processing EMV transactions, the fraudsters will find it,” Omiliak asserted. “By analyzing site data and seeing spikes in transaction volumes or types, you can eliminate a problem much more quickly after it begins. W. Capra works with our clients to proactively use site data to monitor, assess, and mitigate or eliminate fraud trends before they can become massive problems.”
Danny Omiliak and Nathan Rao are dedicated to assisting W. Capra clients with High Risk Site Monitoring and Reporting. For further discussion, contact Danny at [email protected] or Nathan at [email protected].