DTS
Introduction
IntelliPay's
Duplicate Transaction System solves several possible problems
for you, and provides interesting opportunities to improve your
risk management related to Duplicate Transactions.
Some Merchant
Problems From Duplicate Transactions
Duplicate transactions can be a problem for Internet businesses
of all sizes. A successful duplicate transaction will most likely
become a chargeback to the merchant when the customer sees their
monthly statement and realizes they were charged twice for the
same purchase, even if it was an innocent error. (Excessive Chargebacks can be a problem for you with your merchant
account provider. See our report "About Merchant Accounts"
for a brief discussion of this risky and possibly expensive
problem.)
Also, Duplicate
Transactions can be a source of credit card fraud. For Internet
merchants who are assuming all risk related to fraud (as detailed
in your merchant account agreement with your merchant account
provider), having someone with stolen card numbers quickly running
many duplicate transactions can be a real problem. If you fulfill
your product or service in real-time or automatically, based
on a credit card approval, this fraudster can cause mayhem for
you.
You might
see a duplicate charge in a batch for several reasons:
- you inadvertently
enter a manual charge more than once;
- your customer
double clicks on the Submit;
- your customer
hit Submit again since your site or shopping cart was reacting
slowly;
- or they
resubmitted since their Internet connection was slow and confused
them;
- your customer
ordered more than one of the same thing;
- (unfortunately)
a credit card thief is on a spending spree.
Most credit
card processors and/or bank networks do not provide their merchants
with a duplicate control/prevention mechanism.
The Usual
Solutions
In the past, if you caught the duplicate on the same day it occurred,
but before it settled, you could (and still can) simply Void
it from your Open Batch in SAMS. If you or your customer discovered
it later, you could use Smart Terminal to issue a credit, and
be charged a transaction fee from your merchant account. These
steps require some vigilance, as well as some manual steps to
control this problem.
However, in
Internet or merchant-not-present purchases, you aren't there
to do these things.
IntelliPay's
New, Customizable, DTS - a Powerful Automated Solution
One of IntelliPay's missions
is to develop and provide useful transaction tools and features
and to be in constant contact with our merchant customers for
feedback about their needs. DTS is a direct response to some
of our customers offering online immediate fulfillment of financial
and digital products who were having duplicate transaction problems
probably related to fraud attempts.
In our DTS
beta, one of these merchants is able to block a significant
number of duplicate transactions that they believe are fraud
attempts, and DTS has saved them thousands in fees and labor
costs monthly.
Additionally,
the customization features of DTS, along with other ExpertLink
features, allow them to vary IntelliPay's behavior on a transaction-to-transaction
basis, giving them a very dynamic user experience and enhancing
their risk-management procedures remarkably.
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Configuring DTS
The IntelliPay
DTS behaves according to the configuration settings in your
Secure Account Management System (SAMS) under the Edit Configuration
Menu. The configuration controls are easy to understand and
include setting DTS to monitor both credits and normal transactions.
These configurations affect Smart Terminal, LinkSmart and ExpertLink
equally.
You control
duplicate charges in the following ways from Edit Configuration
settings:
- Check sales
and returns separately.
In your
business, it might be the usual case that sales should not
be duplicated, but returns may be because of multiple orders
and shipping delays. Or, coincidentally, a repeat customer
may return two different items for the same amount on the
same card. You need the flexibility to accommodate the variations
appropriate to your business.
- Check just
for repeated use of the same card number, or
You may
not want to accept more than one sale against a given card
number, regardless of amount, during the duplicate control
time period. Merchants who distribute an immediately-available
electronic product should consider this issue carefully.
- Check for
repeated use of the same card number and amount.
To prevent
accidental duplicate entry of a single order, you can have
IntelliPay check both the card number and amount of a sale
(or return).
- Check for
any number of minutes, up to 1440 (24 hours).
You may
only care about catching duplicate requests caused by eager
customers double clicking in their browsers. On the other
hand, you may want to limit sales to any single card and/or
amount to one-a-day.
- Override
the default behavior specified in your configuration on a
request-by-request basis in LinkSmart or ExpertLink.
Suppose
that normally you don't object to repeat orders, but during
a special promotion you want to allow only one sale per
customer. Or, turning the example around, maybe you only
want to allow repeat sales for special promotional orders.
In either case, you can use request-by-request tags to help
you enforce those rules.
If you would
like to use the Duplicate Transaction System, your IntelliPay
account representative can turn it on for you. You can also
ask your IntelliPay provider for access to DTS configuration.
Bear in mind that some IntelliPay providers prefer to configure
the DTS for your account themselves.
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Using
DTS in Smart Terminal
When you
have DTS configured and you process a duplicate transaction
in the Smart Terminal. A message will appear advising you that
the transaction you are processing is a duplicate, at this point
you can choose to not process the transaction by resetting the
form or click the check box at the top of the page to allow
the duplicate transaction to be processed and press the Submit
Transaction button again.
DTS for LinkSmart or ExpertLink Users
In general,
you can configure DTS in Edit Configuration and proceed with
your LinkSmart or ExpertLink coding normally and DTS will automatically
check each transaction according to your configuration settings.
However, there are two HTML tags that can be used in LinkSmart
or ExpertLink to change the behavior of DTS on a transaction-by-transaction
basis if wanted.
These settings
give you very powerful and dynamic control over DTS and allow
you to build a very powerful front end on your side to better
serve your customers, or to better fit your business processes.
It's important
to understand the use of DUPECHECK and DUPEOK so you get the
behavior you want.
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About DUPECHECK
DUPECHECK
instructs IntelliPay to check this transaction against the duplicate
list when it is sent with the value Y. That is, sending DUPECHECK
with the value Y guarantees that IntelliPay will check this
transaction, regardless of your configuration.
Conversely,
DUPECHECK sent with the value N guarantees that IntelliPay will
not check this transaction, again, regardless of your configuration.
As with all
transaction control tags, you would typically send DUPECHECK
in a hidden field, as follows:
<INPUT
Type="hidden" Name="DUPECHECK" Value="Y">
Note that
the case of the both the tag name and the value are important.
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About DUPEOK
DUPEOK is
another transaction control tag that tells IntelliPay that a
previously-identified duplicate request can be authorized. It
should only be sent to IntelliPay in a second request for the
same transaction where the first request received a RESPONSECODE
of 'S' ("Same"- meaning it's the same as another transaction
within the merchant's configured testing period.)
If there was
no earlier identical transaction, it's not a "dupe", therefore,
DUPEOK set to Y will error. DUPEOK is useful only if there is
an earlier approval for the same transaction (based on your
configuration settings).
Flow:
- Transaction
"A" authorizes normally;
- Transaction
"B" arrives with the same card number and/or amount and is
within your DTS time window. DTS finds the earlier transaction,
refuses to authorize the new dupe, and sends you a response
of "S" ("S"ame).
- Now that
you know Trans "B" is a legitimate dupe, you can re-send it
with DUPEOK set to "Y", and it will authorize normally.
Note: In the
past, sending DUPEOK was harmless for FDC, Nova, Vital, and
FTB merchants, because it was ignored by those processors. However,
now that IntelliPay performs extended duplicate checking, sending
DUPEOK routinely in all requests is no longer harmless.
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Using DUPECHECK and DUPEOK
The two tags
DUPECHECK and DUPEOK may be used together. The following table
defines the action IntelliPay takes when both are sent in a
transaction request:
| DUPECHECK |
|
DUPEOK |
|
Result |
| Y
|
|
Y
|
|
Duplicate checking done; if prior dupe, auth; if not, error. |
| Y
|
|
N
|
|
Duplicate checking done; if prior dupe, error; |
| N
|
|
Y
|
|
Error |
| N
|
|
N
|
|
No duplicate checking done. |
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Also see documentation
about the Secure Account Management System, and other IntelliPay
products from our Documents section.
