FIS Launches Guaranteed Payments, a Service It Says Boosts Approvals And Cuts Fraud

FIS Inc. early Wednesday announced a platform it says will make the big processor the first to combine higher approval rates for e-commerce merchants with relief from financial liability for chargebacks stemming from fraudulent transactions. Information was not immediately available regarding whether the new capability carries fees for merchants using it.

The service, dubbed FIS Guaranteed Payments, comes as online merchants are contending with what FIS calls “record highs” in fraud losses. Consumers surged online at the onset of the pandemic, leading to a concurrent wave of fraud. Chargebacks, too, have become more problematic as online shopping volume increased. A survey from Worldpay, an FIS company specializing in e-commerce transaction processing, found 90% of merchants lost revenue last year owing to fraud.

At the same time, an abundance of caution causes merchants to reject as many as 9% of online orders, resulting in an estimated $443 billion in forfeited revenue, according to data from Signifyd and the Merchant Risk Council and cited by FIS. This is despite the fact that fraud is actually involved in about 1% of transactions, FIS says. San Jose, Calif.-based Signifyd Inc., a provider of fraud-prevention technology, is FIS’s technology partner in the new offering.

The new capability, which Jacksonville, Fla.-based FIS says has already been integrated in its Worldpay platform, is now available through the Signifyd Commerce Network, which collects data from online sellers to bar fraud while at the same time okaying purchases by customers it recognizes as legitimate. The network embraces thousands of online merchants, FIS says.

“Guaranteed Payments brings together two powerful sources of transaction intelligence—the Worldpay data stream produced from processing 40 billion orders annually and the Signifyd Commerce Network of thousands of merchants worldwide,” says Vicky Bindra, chief product officer at FIS, in a statement. The new service relies on machine-learning technology to sift through what FIS says amounts to “thousands” of indicators associated with each transaction. These include email addresses and users’ payment credentials.