Policy Protect Onboarding

What is Policy Protect?

Policy Protect is designed to help you mitigate consumer abuse throughout the customer journey, distinguishing it from payment fraud which is handled by Chargeback Guarantee. While fraud involves "bad actors" using stolen credit cards, abuse typically involves customers using their own legitimate payment methods to exploit policies. Policy Protect helps identify abusers based on their cumulative behavior and merchant-defined thresholds.

Riskified focuses on preventing these forms of abuse:

• Refunds and Returns Abuse: This involves false claims around items not received (INR), returning used or fake products, or sending back empty boxes.
• Reseller, Item Limit, and Product Launch Abuse: This occurs when customers buy goods in bulk despite limits put in place by the merchant and typically do this to resell them at a premium in the secondary market. Abusers often circumnavigate these limits by manipulating order data or creating multiple accounts.
• Promo Code Abuse: This involves customers reusing single-use codes or exploiting referral discounts by creating multiple accounts.

Policy Protect decisioning is available at checkout and post-checkout.

At Checkout

Policy Protect Checkout operates at the point of purchase, before an order is fulfilled, to prevent abusive behavior. This solution is designed to stop abusers who attempt to circumvent policies related to:

• Item Limit / Launches: Block orders at checkout if an identity exceeds a predefined item limit, preventing bulk purchases for resale.
• Promo: Block orders from being made due to an identity exceeding a predefined promo limit or using promos exceeding predefined limits
• Return and Refund Claims: Riskified can stop a customer from making future purchases based on their past claim history as an indicator for potential future abuse.

Post-Checkout

Policy Protect Post-Checkout addresses abusive behavior that occurs after an order has been fulfilled. Riskified then analyzes claims data, enriched with customer identity information, to help you make informed decisions on whether to approve or deny a claim, or to flag it for further investigation. This process streamlines your post-purchase operations and helps minimize losses from policy abuse. This solution helps merchants manage risks associated with returns, refunds, and other post-purchase customer interactions, providing insights to determine the legitimacy of claims. The abuse cases Riskified monitors for claims are:

• Refunds: Customers repeatedly file false claims that an item was not received (INR), missing or damaged items, or seek appeasements.
• Returns: Customers engage in "wardrobing" (wearing an item and returning it), constantly buying and returning, or conducting return scams such as returning empty boxes, rocks in a box, or photoshopped return labels.

Policy Decisions at Post-Checkout can be nuanced, meaning that the merchant has several different options to choose from. For example, Riskified can recommend alternative return methods (e.g., in-store returns, applying fees, refund delays) when a claim or identity exceeds a set risk threshold as opposed to just a straight deny of a claim. Also, Riskified can flag claims for manual review by the merchant if the order and identity likelihood of abuse are above a set threshold.

Powered by Identity Explore

Policy Protect transforms guesswork about abusive behavior into data-driven decisions by leveraging Riskified’s Identity Explore clustering capability to connect disparate accounts to a single identity. While elastic linking efficiently catches fraud by matching exact data points between current and past orders, Policy Protect uses identity clustering from our Identity Explore product to track customers, focusing on commonalities in data points to reveal true customer history. This allows for the detection of "one customer" even if they have multiple associated accounts, names, addresses, emails, and phone numbers. Identity Explore’s graph-based, machine learning-powered engine computes customer identities in real-time across Riskified's global merchant network. It uncovers true identity, history, and patterns, even when sophisticated abusers attempt to hide their identity or manipulate data across multiple accounts. Together with Identity Explore, Policy Protect provides a clearer view of entities that are below or above your policy thresholds.

Learn more about Identity Explore.

Managing Policy Rules in Decision Studio

Merchants can manage their policy rules with nuance and data-driven insights within Control Center’s Decision Studio platform. Policy Protect rules can be configured based on order/claim attributes and an optional model risk score threshold. Before implementing a rule, merchants can also use a simulator to see how a policy rule will affect the volume of abuse vs. revenue. This self-service platform enables merchants to streamline decision-making processes while still maintaining control over business logic and outcomes. 

Policy Protect Integration

Our team will work with you to configure the rules and thresholds that align with your business policies and risk tolerance.

At Checkout

Implementing Policy Protect Checkout involves integrating Riskified’s decisioning into your checkout flow. This allows for real-time analysis of incoming orders and provides a decision (e.g., approve, decline, or review) based on the assessment of potential policy abuse.

You can integrate Policy Protect Checkout using one of two flows:

1. Single Response: There will be a single decision given. Taking the more strict decision of the two. The order undergoes a policy review. If Policy Protect approves, it then proceeds to fraud review under the Chargeback Guarantee product. In this flow, Riskified’s policy decision is mandatory; if a "policy declined" decision is sent, the merchant cannot proceed with the order.
2. Dual Response: The order is simultaneously reviewed by Policy Protect and Chargeback Guarantee. The merchant receives two separate decisions and can then decide whether to fulfill the order. This flow acts more as a recommendation.

Your technical integration will facilitate the transmission of relevant order data to Riskified, including customer information, purchase details, and any applicable promotional codes. Once integration is complete, your team can configure policy rules within Decision Studio. Resources are available in the “Get Started” section below.
 

Post-Checkout

The integration process for Policy Protect Post-Checkout primarily focuses on integrating with your systems that manage post-purchase events, such as your returns management system or customer service platform. This integration enables Riskified to receive data related to refund requests, return authorizations, and other claims. Your dedicated Integration Engineer will walk you through everything that is needed.

Get Started: Policy Protect Instruction Guides

Once your integration is complete, here are resources to help you leverage Riskified’s platform to your advantage. Note: You must be signed into your Zendesk Help Center account in order to access these resources. 

• At Checkout Resources
• Post-Checkout Resources