of declined transactions are legitimate orders.
of all consumers have had at least one transaction falsely declined.
of consumers find false declines to be embarrassing and aggravating.
of falsely declined customers choose not to shop with that merchant again.
Most automated fraud programs use fraud scoring and fraud filters to catch fraudulent orders. When these programs identify a suspicious order, they automatically decline it.
You might assume all of these auto-declined orders are accurate decisions. You might even exclude auto-declined transactions when you calculate your order approval rates.
But most declined orders are not fraud.
And unfortunately, payment services providers don’t always provide transparent information about transaction acceptance rates.
If you're excluding auto-declined transactions from your order approval rate, you might not even realize you're falsely declining too many good orders. In fact, you might not notice it until your customers start complaining ... and by then, it may be too late to regain the revenue you lost.
For every $1 lost to credit card fraud, merchants lose $101 to false declines (also known as false positives). It's an enormous problem that most fraud programs ignore.
To understand whether you have a problem with false declines, analyze your rejected transactions to see how the decisions were made. Dig in and look for clues that the declined order might have been legitimate.
Also, review your customer complaints. Falsely declined customers may call your customer service department or vent their frustrations on social media.
And finally, review your entire payment chain to see where your declines are occurring. Ask your payment vendors for regular reports that detail how many transactions they receive and how many they release.
False decline rates are often difficult to determine. But left unchecked, false declines threaten your revenue, your reputation, and your good customer relationships.
It's a delicate balance. Relying too heavily on automated fraud detection systems can mean accidentally declining legitimate orders, angering customers, and losing revenue. But manually reviewing every incoming order is time-consuming, resource-intensive, and simply not practical for most merchants.
ClearSale offers a better solution. We combine advanced AI and machine learning technology with the world's largest team of expert fraud analysts to manually review every suspicious order. The result is a balanced, scalable approach that delivers the HIGHEST approval rates in the industry.
Too often, by the time you realize you have a false decline problem, the damage is done. Instead, it's critical to get ahead of the problem by leveraging a fraud management approach specifically designed to minimize the number of transactions that are falsely declined.
ClearSale is the right solution. While other programs look for reasons to decline your suspicious orders, we look for reasons to approve your orders. And we never, ever auto-decline any order, for any reason. The result is a proven, real-world approach that delivers the LOWEST false decline rates in the industry.
Find out if you're approving as many orders as you think you are. See if you're leaving money on the table. And make sure your fraud program isn't getting in the way of your customers and your revenue.
Explore your options.