Customers are often confused by transaction descriptors within their issuer billing statement or banking apps. Unfortunately, customers call their issuer 51% of the time to clarify confusion (AITE, Improving the Dispute Experience, 2021)or initiate a dispute, rather than contacting the seller who may be able to resolve the inquiry without escalating to a dispute. This is frustrating for sellers because it leads to unnecessary disputes, impacting their revenue and creating additional operational costs. From a customer experience standpoint, the dispute process is often long and frustrating, and more often than not sellers are completely left out of the process and unable to assist with the resolution until it is too late to intervene. Customers are usually granted ‘provisional credit’ by their issuing bank while a dispute is under investigation—spanning over many months in some instances. This negatively impacts customer loyalty and burdens the seller with increased operational stresses, credit card processing fees, fines, operational, and the risk of monitoring programs for sellers. This is where Verifi—a dispute management services provider—can offer solutions to minimize disputes while improving customer experience.

Verifi’s end-to-end suite of payment solutions prevents disputes, resolves disputes, recovers the revenue lost to disputes, and informs sellers of confirmed disputes and fraud. In a nutshell, Verifi protects sellers in the post-purchase stage of the transaction life cycle. Rapid Dispute Resolution and Order Insight are the best solutions to manage and mitigate disputes because they increase transaction transparency and could easily remove unnecessary disputes from the ecosystem. “We help sellers prevent and resolve pre-disputes and recover funds otherwise lost to chargebacks. Our highest priority is to deliver best-in-class solutions that address our clients’ specific needs, bring value to their business, and reduce friction in payments,” adds Sara Craven, Chief Executive Officer, Verifi.

Order Insight provides transaction transparency by supplying a full digital receipt with detailed seller and transaction information to issuer call centers. Data sharing happens in near real-time, while the issuer is on the phone with the customer, so inquiries for legitimate charges are resolved simply by clarifying details about the specific transaction. For added customer convenience, Order Insight also provides a full digital receipt within the consumer’s mobile banking application or online banking interface. The presence of this information in issuer communication channels keeps sellers front and center in the dispute process.

For circumstances where a cardholder inquiry is escalated to a dispute with the issuer, Rapid Dispute Resolution allows the seller to automate the resolution by using an auto-decision engine with seller-defined rules to supersede the dispute process and initiate an instant refund before the dispute becomes a chargeback. This helps sellers reduce the time spent manually reviewing disputes and issuing credits and gives them more time to focus on their core business. Not only does this automated solution allow sellers more control of what disputes to accept or challenge, but it also enhances the customer experience with a speedy automated credit.

Verifi is a trusted partner for a wide range of businesses in various industries because our solutions are functional, provide reliable ROI, and our commitment to customer service stems from the core of our business philosophy. If a business is having dispute problems, the company’s dispute and payment experts will consult on the best solution to remedy the situation. “Our solutions have received ongoing industry recognition, garnering awards from tradeshows, associations, and publications – beginning with RECOVER, our managed dispute representment service, and most recently in May 2021, with RDR, our automated dispute resolution service,” points out Sara.

As the world’s largest payment network, Visa acquired Verifi in 2019 and has leveraged its infrastructure to scale Verifi solutions globally and deliver the same attention and service to disputes as to the initial transaction. Currently, Verifi’s PREVENT solution, which shares detailed transaction data with issuers and cardholders to validate sales and prevent disputes, has 99% global coverage with Visa issuers, is active in 174 countries, and can provide enhanced detail for transactions in 88 currencies. RDR, which launched at the end of 2020, has been activated in more than 80% of Visa issuers globally with seller participation growing.

Since its founding in 2005, Verifi has been a pioneer in delivering cutting-edge dispute management solutions to its customer base. In 2021, the company’s RECOVER solution returned $47 million to clients from 1.1 million dispute representments. Moreover, the Cardholder Dispute Resolution Network (CDRN), the first service in the RESOLVE solution, has reduced the time for dispute resolution from 45 days to 72 hours. “Our newest RESOLVE solution, RDR, further reduces the 72-hour timeframe down to one second, providing fully automated review and resolution. Together in 2021, RESOLVE solution resolved $200m in pre-disputes,” adds Sara.

Today, Verifi is constantly striving to deliver solutions that provide value for our diverse range of clients. Through RDR, a powerful, game-changing solution, collaboration on the part of sellers, their acquirers, and issuers is truly achieved to help improve the payment ecosystem and reduce unnecessary disputes. Luckily, both issuer and seller have an interest in keeping their cardholder/customer satisfied, so global adoption of RDR is expected to keep pace with projections.