How Issuers Can Prepare For Transaction Alert Requirements

When it comes to fighting fraud in payments, one thing is very evident: It can’t be done alone.

That’s why there’s more and more partnerships forming everyday across the ecosystem. And why more and more companies are rushing to implement solutions to fight fraud.

In fact, as cited by TSYS in a recent report about managing fraud and how to prepare for the 2016 alerts requirements, there’s been a 40-percent decrease in incidents of fraud when cardholders monitor transaction activity on their accounts.

Which is why Visa’s mandate required that North American consumer issuers offer transaction-based alert services to their cardholders by October 2016. But there’s some discretion for issuers in implementing the mandate.

Issuers will be required to tie in an alert service into their existing consumer credit, debit and reloadable prepaid accounts

They can choose either to provide their own alerts service or to offer a solution from a third-party provider.

Issuers have the option to offer alerts via phone, SMS text or email, and they can even customize the messages.

Alerts, TSYS points out, also enable issuers to engage their customers digitally, and provide them with real-time information on their mobile devices.

But there’s a few things to consider when it comes to how to implement these transaction alerts.

“A major consideration for issuers is the need to integrate the alerts service enrollment with their other services. Branding, development and integration concerns will drive many of the choices they make about which alerts offering they select,” TSYS wrote in a recent report.

But again, there’s also opportunities to implement these real-time solutions in a way that can benefit the entire industry.

“This mandate is actually an opportunity not just to engage cardholders in the fight against fraud, but also to provide a more comprehensive solution including – in addition to the alerts required by the mandate – those relating to account maintenance activity, personal information changes, suspicious transactions, payment due dates and available credit,” TSYS wrote in its report.

TSYS offers a variety of fraud management solutions, which includes:

TSYS Alerts: An enterprise-wide service that provides consumers with automated, account specific notifications about payment authorizations, maintenance and convenience messaging.

TSYS Alerts for Fraud: An automated notification and response system developed to contact cardholders by phone, email, or text messages to alert them of suspicious transactions on their accounts.

TSYS Alerts for Tokenization: Provides cardholders with automated real-time, account-specific notifications used through channels such as SMS text messaging.

TSYS Card RuleSM: A mobile platform that gives consumers the ability to control payment cards from their smartphones.

As for what needs to be known about the U.S. consumer transactions alerts requirements from Visa:

• This mandate is not applicable to non-reloadable prepaid cards or commercial cards.
• Issuers may provide their own alerts service or offer one from a third-party processor, a mobile app developer or Visa.
• Visa does offer options for alerts, however the free version includes minimal basic functionality providing only transaction notification and multi-channel communication limited to SMS and email.