Transaction Recognition: Dispute or Legitimate Purchase?
Provide purchase details to cardholders to confirm purchases are legitimate and/or if fraud has occurred.
Visa Cardholder Purchase Inquiry (VCPI) provides a cardholder self-service option for issuers looking to integrate VMPI data into their online banking portal/mobile app.
Available for use by
Regional Availability
Visa Cardholder Purchase Inquiry - US Only
Reduce unwanted and invalid disputes through pre-dispute resolution processes
Detailed purchase information is not readily available when a cardholder identifies a transaction they don’t recognize. This lack of information could make the difference between a dispute and a resolved situation. In 2016, Visa saw over 2.9 million disputes initiated because cardholders did not recognize the transactions, an increase of over 11% from the prior year. In addition, 20% of all chargebacks were tied to purchases of digital goods, which included electronic downloads of movies, music, and phone application purchases.
As the number of transactions related to digital goods continues to increase, so does the potential for an increased number of disputes. This can be expensive as the cost of working a dispute can be far greater than the purchase itself. Issuers need a more proactive way to prevent a dispute from occurring, particularly when the issue is recognition, misinterpretation of data, or friendly fraud.
Transaction Recognition Scenario
Everly, a recent college graduate, is consolidating her purchases onto a credit card to build her credit and keep everything in a single location. Upon checking her first month’s cardholder statement using her issuer’s mobile app, she notices a transaction from a merchant “DB Enterprises” for $145.00. In a panic, her first inclination is to pick up the phone to contact her issuing bank to dispute the transaction as she doesn’t recall ever making a purchase from “DB Enterprises”. As she is reviewing the transaction, she notices that there is a button on the issuer provided mobile app to “Retrieve Purchase Details” and since she does not recognize this purchase at all, she presses the button.
Within a couple seconds, the issuer mobile app returns a wealth of information about this $145.00 purchase. Turns out “DB Enterprises” is actually “Debby Bailey’s Hair Salon” on 123 Main St in the same town she lives in, and the breakdown of the $145 was for a haircut and a 42-ounce bottle of Shampoo and Conditioner from her favorite hair product. “Oh yes!” she exclaims, as she just got her haircut done a week ago, and just was not aware that her hairstylist, Debby, registered her business using the name “DB Enterprises”. Happy and relieved, Everly no longer has to pursue a dispute.
Review Card Statement
Everly is reviewing her card statement on her bank’s mobile banking app
Unrecognized Transaction
She identifies a transaction she does not recognize.
Request Additional Information
She clicks the button to “retrieve additional information”.
Retrieve Additional Information
A request is made to Visa, who fulfills the request with data from the merchant (if participating), merchant identifying information (from Visa’s Merchant Search product) and transaction data from VisaNet.
Review Purchase Details
Upon reviewing the purchase details, Everly identifies the transaction and was a participant in the transaction.
Transaction Resolved
Everly does not pursue a dispute and is content with the resolution.
Key Benefits for Issuers
Reduce Chargebacks
By providing data elements such as the specific good(s) purchased, merchant data can be used by your customers, the cardholders, to solve many of the basic dispute issues your customer service representatives have to field today.
Increase Process Efficiency
Creating and managing disputes for low-dollar digital goods purchases often times is a lose-lose situation. The Visa Cardholder Purchase Inquiry provides a mechanism for merchants and issuers to quickly resolve low-dollar, high volume disputes and create a positive impact on the cardholder experience by providing quicker resolution through a self-service model directly incorporated into the customer’s existing client experience (online or mobile banking issuer portal).
Reduce Costs
By empowering cardholders to answer their own questions pertaining to transaction recognition, fraud, friendly fraud and other use cases, issuers can optimize their customer support teams by limiting these low-value-add calls and provide cardholders with the data they need to solve many of their questions.
APIs Used
Visa Cardholder Purchase Inquiry
Visa Cardholder Purchase Inquiry (VCPI) provides issuers with a self-service model for their cardholders to review transaction specifics sent by participating merchants.