Detect Fraudulent Payments Before They Clear
Chargebacks and fraudulent transactions eat into margins. By the time a dispute lands, the goods are gone, the fee is due, and your chargeback ratio is climbing toward network monitoring.
We build real-time fraud scoring and velocity checks that stop bad payments before processing.
Sound Familiar?
These are the exact issues our clients faced before real-time payment fraud detection:
- Chargebacks arrive weeks after the goods shipped, so you lose the fee, the product, and the staff hours
- Stolen cards clear at checkout because there is no real-time fraud scoring on the payment attempt
- Card-testing attacks hammer small amounts overnight and nobody notices until the chargeback ratio spikes
- Sales and support cannot see why a payment was declined, so genuine customers abandon and never come back
- Finance only discovers the fraud once Visa or Mastercard flags your merchant account for monitoring
Visa monitors merchants above a 0.65% chargeback ratio (Mastercard at 1%). Stay above those lines and you face fines, higher fees, or loss of card acceptance. Catching fraud after settlement is already too late.
What Payment Fraud Detection Actually Does
Payment attempted → scored and velocity-checked → hold or clear → outcome synced to CRM.
Payment Hits Checkout
Customer pays by card, Instant EFT, or debit through your gateway
Score & Velocity Check
Real-time fraud scoring plus rules on card, IP, device, and address frequency
Hold, Challenge, or Clear
High risk blocks or steps up auth; clean payments settle without delay
CRM & Ops Sync
Risk outcome lands on the order and contact so teams never guess why it failed
Chargeback Prevention Wired Into Your Stack
Real-Time Fraud Scoring
Every card, Instant EFT, and debit attempt is scored before authorisation. High-risk payments hold or decline; clean ones clear without friction.
Velocity Checks
Rules watch card, IP, device, and shipping address frequency in short windows, catching card testing and burst attacks before they clear.
CRM Risk Context
Order history, refund patterns, and customer tenure from your CRM feed the score, so a loyal buyer is not treated like a first-time card thief.
Chargeback Prevention Hooks
Risky attempts are challenged with 3-D Secure or blocked pre-settlement, cutting the disputes that burn fees and push you toward network monitoring.
Review Queue & Overrides
Borderline payments land in a short review queue with the score, velocity hits, and CRM context. Your team releases or rejects with a full audit trail.
Gateway & Stack Fit
Wired into Stripe, PayFast, Peach, Ozow, and your checkout, with outcomes synced back to the CRM so sales and support see the same risk picture.
Gateways and Systems We've Wired for Fraud Scoring
From 28 Chargebacks a Month to 9
How a Cape Town ecommerce retailer pulled their chargeback ratio under Visa's threshold and stopped shipping goods that never get paid.
Fraud After Settlement
- Stolen cards cleared at checkout; finance only saw the dispute weeks later
- 28 chargebacks a month at roughly R2,370 in fees and ops each, plus lost stock
- Chargeback ratio sat at 0.82%, above Visa's 0.65% monitoring line
- Ops spent 18 hours a week chasing disputes and re-shipping replacements
- No velocity rules, so overnight card-testing runs went unnoticed
Fraud Scored Before Clearance
- Every attempt scored in real time with velocity checks on card, IP, and device
- High-risk payments blocked or challenged before goods left the warehouse
- Chargebacks fell to 9 a month; ratio dropped to 0.28%
- Review queue handles borderline cases in minutes, not dispute packets
- CRM shows why an order failed, so support keeps genuine buyers
Before vs After Fraud Detection
How It Works
From first conversation to live fraud scoring in 3–5 weeks.
Map Your Fraud Exposure
Chargeback volume, gateway mix, average order value, and where suspicious payments still clear today.
Free Scoping Call
30-minute call to design scoring thresholds, velocity rules, and how holds should behave at checkout.
Build & Parallel Test
We wire scoring into your payment stack, run shadow mode against live traffic, then tune false positives.
Go Live & Monitor
High-risk payments stop before clearance. Your team reviews exceptions; clean orders keep flowing.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is payment fraud detection different from invoice fraud checks?
Invoice and BEC detection protect money leaving your business to suppliers. Payment fraud detection protects money coming in: stolen cards, card testing, velocity abuse, and chargebacks on goods already shipped. Both matter; they sit on opposite sides of the cash flow.
Will real-time fraud scoring block legitimate customers?
Done well, no. Stripe reports Radar-style models reduce fraud by about 32% on average while blocking fewer than 0.05% of legitimate transactions. We tune thresholds against your traffic, use CRM history for known buyers, and put borderline cases in a short review queue instead of a hard decline.
Which payment gateways and CRMs can you connect?
We have built fraud scoring and velocity rules around Stripe, PayFast, Peach Payments, Ozow, Yoco, and Netcash, with risk context from HubSpot and other CRMs. If your checkout and CRM expose events or webhooks, we can put detection in front of clearance.
What do velocity checks actually catch?
Burst attempts from the same card, IP, device, or shipping address in a short window: classic card testing and credential stuffing. Alone they are brittle; combined with a real-time score and CRM history they stop the attacks that spike your chargeback ratio overnight.
What happens when a payment is flagged?
Depending on the score, the attempt is declined, challenged with stronger authentication, or held for review. Your team sees why it was flagged (velocity hit, new device, billing mismatch, high risk score), then releases or rejects. Every step is logged for disputes and audits.
How much does payment fraud detection cost?
Scoped builds typically range from R40,000 to R90,000 depending on gateways, CRM context, and how many review workflows you need. Against an average chargeback cost near R2,370 in fees and ops alone, plus lost goods, most ecommerce teams see payback within one to two quarters of reduced disputes.
Stop Paying for Fraud After It Clears
If chargebacks are still your first signal that a payment was bad, you are losing goods, fees, and merchant standing on a problem that can be caught earlier.
Tell us which gateway you use, what your chargeback ratio looks like, and where suspicious payments still settle. We will show you how real-time scoring and velocity checks would work in your checkout.