Payments Blog

For both merchants and issuing banks, false declines can do severe damage. In most cases, they are worse than fraud and can have longer-term effects. Solving the false declines problem, however, requires getting to the root of the issue at hand.

Most small-to-medium sized online merchants in the digital payments industry feel a certain degree of ownership over their business. While this is probably true for all online merchants in this field, these merchants likely have more of a personal connection to their business because of the relative size and the investment of time and resources.

In the digital payments industry, there’s often a heightened sense of urgency when it comes to fraud prevention, with good reason. If it’s not taken care of, fraud can create serious problems for online merchants, issuing banks, consumers and other organizations in this industry.

In today’s digital-centric world, it’s not always easy for online merchants to differentiate themselves. There are a ton of options for consumers today, which has made it very difficult for these merchants to create and cultivate brand loyalty. Additionally, even if a merchant manages to develop brand loyalty, whether it be through a smart marketing campaign or simply providing high quality products and customer service, consumers could lose interest and start going to another merchant at any second for any random reason.

For many years, false declines and fraud have been a thorn in the side of online merchants, often creating immense frustration. In the industry, fraud is discussed and covered a great deal, with various publications giving updates and insights into fraudulent trends, patterns, etc. Comparatively, false declines aren’t really discussed nearly as much, despite being the bigger and more costly problem for online merchants.