Shopify Strives To Reduce False Positives And Increase Customer Acquisition

Vesta, a transaction-guarantee platform for online purchases, has partnered with e-commerce platform provider Shopify Inc. to make its fraud-fighting solutions available to Shopify merchants. The addition of Vesta is expected to help Shopify sellers in the United States, Canada, and Mexico reduce false positives and increase approval rates for legitimate transactions.

Shopify merchants can trial Vesta’s Vesta Payment Guarantee solutions free for 30 days.

Vesta’s technology uses advanced machine-learning models and link analysis, a technique that focuses on relationships and connections within a dataset, for all transactions in real time. Vesta’s technology can increase card-not-present approval rates by an average of 10%, it says.

False positives–legitimate transactions mistaken for fraud–cost merchants an estimated $300 billion annually, according to Lake Oswego, Ore.-based Vesta. As a result, e-commerce merchants spend about $4 fighting fraud for every $1 of direct fraud loss, the company figures.

“Vesta’s model is to approve as many legitimate transactions as possible to help businesses maximize their revenues,” Hrishi Talwar, Vesta chief product officer, said in a statement.

In addition to the deal with Vesta, Ottawa, Ontario-based Shopify expanded its relationship with online ad agency Criteo. Shopify merchants in the U.S. will now be able to access the Criteo app on the Shopify app store. Criteo’s commerce-media platform provides insights into nearly $1 trillion of e-commerce sales and analyzes more than 120 shopper-intent signals from 35 billion daily browsing and buying events to deliver relevant ads to online shoppers in real time that entice them to purchase.

A Shopify partner since 2018, Criteo joined the Shopify Plus Technology Partner Program and Certified App Program in 2022 to give Shopify merchants access to its customer-acquisition and -retention solutions Last year, Criteo saw a 36% year-over-year increase in the number of new Shopify merchants using Criteo.

“Criteo’s self-service setup unlocks a whole new set of possibilities for Shopify merchants looking to harness the open Web and acquire new customers,” David Wurtz, vice president of product for Shopify, said in a statement.