Every order is scored before the card is charged, and every decision is kept.
Fraud screening runs ahead of the authorization, across signals from the whole platform rather than one store. What follows is how the score is built, what happens at each outcome, and how a dispute is prevented or answered.
Why screening happens before the charge
A fraudulent order that is caught after authorization has already cost you a fee and an entry in your dispute history.
Most checkout plugins decide about fraud after the money has moved, by flagging an order for you to look at or by refunding it once it has been charged. By then the issuing bank has recorded an authorization against your account, the cardholder may already have called their bank, and the only remaining question is whether the loss lands as a refund or as a chargeback.
Screening here runs when the shopper presses pay and before the authorization is sent. The order is scored from 0 to 100, the score decides what happens next, and the decision is made in the time it takes the page to respond. For the large majority of orders nothing visible happens at all; the authorization goes out, the issuer approves it and the shopper sees the confirmation page.
The signals come from across the platform, not from your store alone. A card or an email that has been tied to a lost dispute at any business on the platform carries that history to the next checkout it appears at. A device that placed six orders at four stores in an hour looks different from one that placed its first. A single store, however busy, cannot see either of those things by itself.
What the score is made of
Velocity comes first because it is the most reliable signal there is. We count how many orders, distinct cards, email addresses and devices have been seen together over the preceding minutes, hours and days. One card used from one device for one order is ordinary. Many cards from one device in a short time is not, and the pattern looks the same at every store.
The device fingerprint and the IP address come next. The fingerprint identifies a browser and device combination without a cookie, so clearing storage does not reset it, and it lets us connect a return visit to an earlier order whether or not the shopper signed in. The IP address is checked for reputation and for whether it belongs to a residential connection, a mobile carrier, a hosting provider or a known proxy or anonymizer. A hosting range placing a consumer order is not automatically fraud, but it moves the score.
Then the card itself: the issuer’s response to the billing address and the security code, the issuing country compared with the shipping and IP countries, and whether the card’s fingerprint appears on the platform-wide list of cards tied to prior disputes. That list is hashed and carries no order or business details. The email address is checked the same way, and against patterns that are typical of addresses created for one purchase.
Finally, the order: the amount against your usual order size, the products, the shipping method, and whether the shipping address has been used with other cards or other names. Each signal moves the score by an amount set for your account, and the weights are adjusted during setup to the pattern of your own orders rather than copied from a template.
The three outcomes
Allow, step up, or decline. The thresholds between them are yours to set.
An order below the first threshold is allowed and goes to the issuer for authorization straight away. This is where most orders land, and the shopper is not aware that anything was checked. The score and the signals are still stored with the order.
An uncertain order can be asked to confirm with the shopper’s bank, usually by approving a prompt in their banking app or entering a code sent by text, in the same way they do for other online purchases. Whether and when that happens is set per account during review. When the shopper abandons the confirmation, the order stays pending for thirty minutes and no charge is made.
An order above the second threshold is declined before any authorization is sent. The shopper is told the payment could not be completed and is invited to use another method. In the dashboard you see the full picture and can allow the order if you know the customer.
New rules, and changes to existing ones, run in a shadow period before they act. During that time the rule records what it would have decided on every order without affecting the outcome, so you can see how many orders it would have stepped up or declined, and which ones, before switching it on. We do not move an account from shadow to live on a rule until the shadow data covers enough orders to judge it.
What is kept with every order
The record written at checkout is the same record a dispute response is built from later.
Everything that contributed to the decision is stored against the order at the moment the decision is made, in the dashboard and through the API. It is not reconstructed afterwards. The reason is practical: a dispute can arrive up to several months after the sale, and evidence that was captured on the day carries more weight than evidence assembled from memory and server logs.
- Score and decision
- The 0–100 score, the outcome (allowed, stepped up, declined) and which rules or signals moved it.
- Velocity
- How many orders, cards, emails and devices were seen together in the preceding hours and days.
- Device and network
- The device fingerprint, the IP address and its reputation, and whether the connection came through a proxy or hosting range.
- Card checks
- The issuer’s address and security-code results, the card’s issuing country, and whether 3-D Secure was requested and completed.
- Acceptance
- The refund and cancellation terms shown, the time the shopper confirmed them, and the descriptor printed on the page.
- Fulfilment
- The carrier, tracking number and delivery scan, added when the order ships.
Alerts, and refunding before a dispute exists
When a cardholder queries a charge with their bank, the card networks can pass an alert to us before the bank turns the query into a formal dispute. The alert names the charge and gives a short window, usually a day or two, in which a refund settles the matter. A charge refunded inside that window is not counted as a dispute in your ratios and carries no dispute fee.
You decide how alerts are handled. You can set an amount below which we refund automatically on your behalf, and above which the alert waits for you in the dashboard with the order, the shopper’s history and the tracking status beside it. Many businesses set the automatic limit near their average order value and handle the larger ones by hand. Either way, every alert and every refund made under it is recorded on the order.
Alerts do not catch everything. Some banks do not participate, and some cardholders go straight to a dispute. They do catch a meaningful share of the disputes that would otherwise have arrived, and they catch them at the point where the fix costs you only the sale.
How a dispute is answered
The response is assembled from what checkout recorded and filed before the deadline. You see it before it goes.
When a dispute does arrive, the dashboard shows it the same day with the reason code the bank gave, the deadline, and the order it concerns. We assemble the response from the order record: the issuer’s address and security-code results at the time of the charge, the IP address and device, the descriptor that was shown on the checkout page, the refund and cancellation terms the shopper confirmed and the time they confirmed them, the confirmation email, and the carrier’s tracking and delivery scan.
For a dispute that claims the goods did not arrive, the delivery scan and address match usually decide it. For one that claims the charge was not authorized, the security-code match, the address match and a completed 3-D Secure confirmation carry most of the weight. For one that claims the shopper cancelled, the timestamped acceptance of your terms and any later contact with support are what matter. The response is written in the form each card network expects and filed before the deadline, and you can read it, add to it or ask us to accept the dispute instead.
Not every dispute is winnable. A cardholder who received the goods and disputes anyway is often decided in the cardholder’s favour regardless of evidence, and we will tell you when that is the likely outcome rather than spend your time on it. The dispute fee stated in your agreement is charged when the dispute is opened and is not reversed on a win, which is how the networks charge it to us.
Ratios, and what you can change
Your dispute ratio and refund ratio are calculated every day and shown against the thresholds the card networks apply to merchants. The thresholds are low, lower than most business owners expect, and a store with modest volume can move a long way toward them on a handful of disputes. We would rather you watch the number than discover it in a letter, and we contact you when a trend is heading the wrong way.
Within the account you can set the two score thresholds, the automatic refund limit for alerts, the rules that apply to specific products or shipping destinations, and the list of customers who are always allowed because you know them. You can also add a card, an email or an address to your own block list. What you cannot do from the dashboard is switch screening off entirely, retry a declined card without the shopper, or see another business’s customers. Those limits protect the account, and they protect the approval rates of every other business sharing the same acquiring relationships.
Common questions about screening and disputes
Will screening turn away good customers?
Some friction is unavoidable, but the design pushes it toward the orders that earn it. Most orders score low and are allowed without the shopper noticing anything. Orders in the middle are stepped up to 3-D Secure, which means the shopper confirms the purchase with their bank in the way they already use for other purchases. Only orders at the top of the range are declined outright. During setup we tune thresholds to your order mix, and new rules run in a shadow period first so you can see what they would have done before they do it.
What is the difference between a chargeback alert and a dispute?
An alert arrives from the card networks when a cardholder has queried a charge with their bank but a formal dispute has not yet been filed. For a short window you can refund the charge and the dispute never happens, which keeps it out of your ratios. A dispute is the formal case, with a deadline for evidence and an outcome that counts against your account whether you win or lose. Alerts are optional and you set a limit on how large a charge we may refund automatically on your behalf.
Can I see why a particular order was declined?
Yes. Every order carries its score, the outcome and the signals that produced it, in the dashboard and by API. If a decline looks wrong you can allow the shopper to retry, send them a payment link, or ask us to review the rule that fired. What we do not do is retry the card ourselves or lower a threshold for a single order on the spot.
Does the shared list of disputed cards mean other stores see my customers?
No. The list holds hashed card fingerprints and email addresses that were tied to a lost dispute somewhere on the platform, with no order, product or business attached. Another store’s screening learns that a card has disputed before; it never learns where, what was bought or who the merchant was. Your customer data is not shared with other accounts.
What happens to my account if disputes climb?
You will know before anyone else does. Dispute and refund ratios are shown daily against the card networks’ thresholds, and we contact you when a trend is heading toward one rather than after it is crossed. In most cases the cause is a product, a shipping delay or a descriptor people do not recognize, and it is fixable. An account that stays above the thresholds is subject to the reserve and review terms in the agreement, which we would rather never have to use.
Bring us your dispute history.
If you have processing statements and a dispute report from your current provider, we will read them before the call and tell you what we think is causing the pattern, whether or not you open an account.