Pagos’ Post

Continuing our payments education series, it's time for the letter C. And if we're talking important payments basics, C can stand for nothing other than 🚨 Chargebacks 🚨 Chargebacks occur when a cardholder disputes a transaction, thereby kicking off a process that affects both merchants and their payment processors. While chargebacks are designed to protect consumers from fraud or poor service, they can also easily become a significant challenge for businesses of all types. Here's the basic flow: A customer disputes a charge because they don't recognize it on their bank statement, didn't receive or weren't satisfied with the purchased product, or suspect fraud. The issuing bank may try to resolve it with an inquiry, but if that doesn't work, they submit the chargeback with a reason code explaining the customer's issue. The merchant then has a choice: accept the chargeback or fight back by presenting evidence that the charge was valid. Going through this chargeback process—regardless of whether you accept or fight the dispute—can mean paying additional fees, losing revenue from sold goods or services, or even potentially facing future challenges with your payment processor. But for merchants, knowledge is power! By understanding chargeback reason codes and common dispute triggers like fraud, product fulfillment, or return policy issues, you can take proactive steps to prevent excessive disputes from causing long-term damage. When chargebacks do occur, having set customer service processes in place and documented records of consumer interactions can provide you with a strong case when you do fight back. How does your business handle chargebacks? Let us know! And if you want to dig deeper into your chargeback data, Pagos can help you monitor incoming chargebacks and find ways to minimize their impact on your business.

Visa Flexible Credential cards are here! Customers now have the ability to choose from multiple funding sources when initiating a transaction with a single card. This is huge and it's time to start thinking about how you may need to adjust your payment operations to accommodate processing these cards. The first step is just to know when customers have cards with this functionality. Good thing Parrot has your back! Our direct-to-network BIN database now has a field that indicates if a card is VFC enabled. Check out our latest blog post to learn more about Visa Flexible Credential and how Parrot can help navigate customer usage of VFC cards: https://lnkd.in/gJ2Ubp9j

For our next micro lesson on the ABC’s of payment processing, we’re tackling B for ✨ BIN data✨ . Ah BIN data. The Pagos team and our customers love BINs and the wealth of information they provide about payment cards and customers who wield them. And you will, too, once you realize exactly how many data points you can get from a single 8-10 digit BIN. We’re talking about issuing bank and country, card brand and product name, details about authentication requirements, eligibility for Level II & III processing, and so much more. BIN data gives you a well-rounded view of who’s transacting with your business and provides more parameters by which to segment your payments data during an analysis. Even more, when used as a part of your greater payments strategy, it can help direct processing decisions! Want to route transactions to the processor most likely to approve it? Or to the processor with the lowest processing costs for that card type? Want to perform a quick fraud screening at checkout by comparing a customer’s country to their card's issuing country in the checkout flow? The possibilities with BIN data are greater than you might expect. Want to learn more about BIN and the Pagos products that can help you make the most of your BIN data? Schedule a demo today! #payments #BINdata #paymentseducation

If we’re going to do a series on the 📝 🍎 ABC’s of payments basics 🍎 📝, we must start at the very beginning (a very good place to start) with A, as in Approval Rate! Approval rate is calculated by dividing your total approved transaction count by your total attempted transaction count. This metric is fairly straightforward and represents the proportion of customers who had a positive experience with your business or the percentage of potential transactions that actually contributed to your revenue. With this single metric, you can gain a baseline understanding of the health of your payment processing setup and where you have opportunities to do better by cutting down on the number of good transactions that are either blocked from being processed (e.g. gateway rejected) or declined during the payment processing cycle. To increase your approval rate, you must dig into the decline reason codes assigned to declined transactions. These codes show how many of those declines were unnecessary and caused by issues like setup problems or overly strict fraud rules. A small change to decrease a specific type of decline can often increase your approval rate by multiple percentage points (which depending on your processing volume, could mean big revenue jumps)! On the flip side, you can see what portion of your declines were legitimate, either because of insufficient customer funds, incorrect payment credentials, or fraud. If the majority of your declines aren’t addressable, you can rest easy knowing you’re processing strategy is working at peak efficiency. This is only the tip of the approval rate iceberg. Let us know in the comments how your business approaches approval rate. And if you’re looking for new ways to monitor approvals and declines, including viewing decline code breakdowns for individual segments of your transaction volume, check out our payments visualization service, Peacock by Pagos! #payments #paymentseducation #paymentsoptimization #data

🎒 ✏ 🍎 Back to school time is upon us, and the crisp air and new packs of No. 2 pencils (or new iPads? We're really aging ourselves here...) have us thinking: How can Pagos help you with the basics of payments education? What are the ABCs of processing, if you will? Grab your brand new backpack and follow along with Pagos as we put the FUN in payment fundamentals! In the coming weeks, we'll be digging into the definitions of payments terminology, the importance of certain metrics, and the intricacies of topics like payment method acceptance and retry strategies. Check back soon for our first lesson!

Our very own Drew Dickelman is speaking at the #MAGPaymentsConference next month in Orlando, Florida. Don't miss an opportunity to learn more about the revolutionary payments data benchmarking available through Flamingo by Pagos. See you there!

We’re thrilled to introduce a game-changing feature in our direct-to-network BIN database: 🌟 no-code BIN lookups! 🌟 With our latest update, anyone in your organization can easily access detailed BIN data—no coding required. Whether you’re in payments operations, customer service, or risk management, no-code Parrot is here to help you make informed, data-driven decisions. Learn more in our latest blog: https://lnkd.in/gupcfa7F

Last week we taught you what first-party misuse is and how it can be a real drain on revenue. This week, we’re arming you in the battle against these new fraud tactics with the metrics you need to watch and the tools we offer for doing so effortlessly: https://lnkd.in/gX_gJTZd

Here at Pagos, we've been on the edge of our seats watching the 2024 Olympics in Paris. But we're not focused on the athletic talent so much as the impressive uptick in payment processing happening in France right now! We've witnessed some incredible leaps in transaction volume, but approval rates aren't always going for the gold… In this example, we see a merchant with a MID specifically used for processing point-of-sale transactions in France. With all the American tourists in France, transaction volume made with US-issued cards increased significantly around the start of the Olympic Games and has remained high ever since. At the same time, approval rates dropped by around 15%. What can we learn from this?? If your city is hosting a large event that will absolutely bring in global tourists—be it the Olympics, the World Cup, or a Taylor Swift concert—you need to ensure you're prepared to accept popular payment methods or internationally-issued cards. If not, your ability to take advantage of the increase in transaction attempts may fall flat. Are you realizing that even if you did want to do your best to prepare for a large influx of event-related, global customers, you'd have no way of easily monitoring that transaction volume? Pagos has your back 🥇🥇🥇