Verifi Review: Stopping Chargebacks Early
Verifi says its tools stop chargebacks before they start. This review walks through CDRN, RDR, the Decision API and Order Insight, in Verifi's own words.
What Verifi does: stopping chargebacks before they start
Verifi says it works earlier. Its tools step in at the pre-dispute stage, when a customer has a complaint but has not yet forced a chargeback.
Verifi's page says its tools head off a chargeback by crediting the cardholder first, before the chargeback gets set off. That is the whole idea in one line. The customer gets their money back through a refund path, and the formal dispute never gets filed.
Verifi's webinar says disputes play an integral role in the post-purchase experience. Verifi's answer is to resolve it before it becomes a chargeback on the merchant's record.
The company has two main tools for this, plus one that helps issuer call centers. This review covers each one, then looks at what resolution means for a merchant's dispute ratio.
CDRN: Verifi's Cardholder Dispute Resolution Network explained
Verifi's older dispute tool is the Cardholder Dispute Resolution Network, known as CDRN. A shopper phones their bank over a charge they do not know. The bank has a complaint on its hands. What happens next decides whether the merchant eats a chargeback.
With CDRN, the merchant chooses to give the cardholder a credit to resolve a Visa or non-Visa dispute before a chargeback is filed. When a dispute inquiry comes in, the merchant looks at it and decides whether to refund.
Verifi says CDRN handles both Visa disputes and disputes on other networks.
RDR: how Rapid Dispute Resolution works
Rapid Dispute Resolution, or RDR, is the second of the two. With RDR, a merchant resolves Visa disputes automatically through a decision engine that credits the cardholder before a chargeback starts.
Here is the step-by-step version, as Verifi describes it.
A shopper phones the bank that issued their card with a problem. Instead of the issuer filing a chargeback, the inquiry goes through RDR. Verifi says Rapid Dispute Resolution settles pre-disputes on its own, through a decision engine driven by rules the seller writes. The seller's rules decide which dispute inquiries it accepts liability for and which it declines.
When the rules approve a case, the credit goes to the cardholder at once. Verifi says RDR brings the seller's customer service into issuer call centers and settles disputes on the spot, right when the customer raises them. When the issuer and seller work together this way, the customer gets a quick answer and the chargeback is avoided.
Rapid Dispute Resolution aims to give customers a quick, good outcome before a dispute escalates. For the merchant, the win is that the case closes before it becomes a chargeback.
The RDR Decision API: rules merchants write themselves
The decision engine is only as good as the rules behind it. This is where the RDR Decision API comes in.
Verifi's page says the RDR Decision API lets merchants create rules specific to their business needs, industry, or payment type. With it, merchants write their own logic to decide which RDR cases to accept.
The logic a seller can put in place has a ceiling. According to Verifi, a seller may set up as many as 10 rule scenarios and pick from 7 attributes. A merchant gets ten scenarios, each built from seven available attributes, and no more.
Order Insight: giving issuer call centers the order details
Not every complaint needs a refund. Some just need information.
Verifi says Order Insight gives issuer call centers detailed order information to clear up customer confusion and head off disputes.
What resolution means for the dispute ratio and future disputes
Two questions matter most to a merchant watching its numbers.
First, do these resolved cases count against the merchant's ratio? Verifi says no. Verifi says a dispute settled before a chargeback begins is not counted in Visa's dispute ratio. That is the core appeal of resolving early. The case closes without touching the metric that Visa watches.
Second, can the customer come back and dispute the same charge again? Verifi's page says disputes resolved with CDRN or RDR are not eligible for future disputes. Disputes resolved with CDRN or RDR cannot be disputed again later. Once resolved, the case is closed for good.
A warning is in order at this point. Verifi says an acquirer can still apply its own risk rules even if a seller stays within Visa's dispute ratio target. That means a merchant can sit under Visa's limit and still draw a flag from the acquiring bank.
Network coverage: which issuers and card networks Verifi reaches
Verifi says it reaches issuers on Visa and on other networks, including Mastercard, Discover and American Express.
How Verifi compares with other chargeback tools
Verifi sits in a specific spot. It resolves disputes at the pre-dispute stage, before a chargeback is filed.
To compare approaches, read the chargeblast review, the signifyd review, the chargeflow review, and the sift review.
For a merchant whose main pain is disputes that could have been a refund, Verifi's approach is direct. The complaint gets answered at the moment it is made, the customer gets a credit, and the chargeback never lands.