Actinic Payments 3rd Man CHECK

[The Baby Studio]

Hi I couldnt find an exisitng answer for this.

Our 3rd man status is showing CHECK with a red icon for one of our payments. I cant find any help on "Check." Being relatively new this is the first payment I have had a problem with.

What should I do? Who do I call, My PSP is Actinic.
I have not shipped yet as the item is on back order, should I comit and see if it goes through? If I do can the card people pull it back if its fraud?

At the top of the payments screen it says authorised, but is that just my software or is that the PSP authorising it?

The help in Actinic is not much help.

Any advice appreciated.

D

[chickenhouseman]

What it means is there is a possibility that there is something suspect about the transaction. If you view the payment details you can see which items it scores low on. It's up to you if you process the order or reject the customer. It really depends on the risk - if there's spending thousands watch out, if they're spending a fiver there's not much to loose.

[cbarling]

Yes, that's correct. The payment has still been taken so if you decide not to ship you will need to refund it.

Chris

[The Baby Studio]

Thanks for replying.

As this was the first time a transaction was doubtful I tried to get help. The acquiring bank wouldn't help as Actinic payments dont give the whole card number.

I couldnt see any help line at Creditcall or Actinic. There seems to be no number to call. I think this is a bit off considering they charge quite a bit for processing the payments evey month.

Effectively I am paying HSBC and Actinic for a service and they dont offer any help for a process that is in my view theirs.

D

Update: At the time I posted I had not comitted the payment. As I couldnt get help I comitted it to see if it goes through OK. The items are on back order so I have not shipped yet.

[chickenhouseman]

The 3rd man check is telling you that the transaction shows signs of being a potential risk. If it shows signs of risk but isn't stolen then you have no problem. If it has been stolen but not yet reported you'll get a chargeback. If the card has already been reported stolen then the transaction would have been declined.

The help is included within the Actinic help:


The 3rd Man
Every Actinic Payments account includes automated fraud screening by the 3rd Man, and full results are displayed for each order on the Actinic desktop.The 3rd Man is Europe’s leading fraud screening company. They will automatically check card orders against a wide variety of factors and provide a simple red or green traffic light to indicate whether an order is safe or not, together with supporting data.

[cbarling]

The first point to make is that the payment is valid as far as your bank is concerned, so that is all that they would tell you. The red flag is the 3rd Man service indicating that the probability of fraud is high. 3rd Man is much more sophisticated in its fraud checking than that carried out by the banks, although 3rd Man is itself now a subsidiary of Mastercard.

3rd Man (now known as Datacash Fraud Services) will offer a personalised service to advise on fraud but it will cost somewhere in the region of £1,000 per month. That's why we've adopted an automated service bundled with Actinic Payments free of charge.

Essentially the decision to ship or otherwise is yours because the cost of either losing a perfectly good customer or suffering fraud and a subsequent charegback will fall on you.

It's a business judgement which you need to take like many others. It will depend on the mix of products and customers that you sell and their susceptibility to fraud.

There's more information on the community here.

I wrote an article on the subject that you might be interested in here.

Hope that all helps.

Chris

[The Baby Studio]

Thank you and the previous poster, I really appreciate the advice.

The actinic and 3rd man help didn't have anything on the warning I have "Check" but I logged into mye Actinic payments website and "Check" is shown as "Held" there.

Its a foreign card so it gets a +40 for not matching the billing country. The person is registered at the delivery address.

Having called HSBC for a check, I have learnt that I will never be able to check with them as we dont get the 16 digit number, which they require. Am I missing something? how do I check on cards, do I just rely on the authorisation in the Actinic payments section?

Is it OK to ask the customer some questions or reveal there is a higher risk factor on their card? For example the 3rd man says there is a landline phone at the house, but the contact number we have seems to be a foreign mobile. I could ask for their landline number so I can call them at the house.

Or I guess I could just wait a week before shipping, it will probably be that long anyway, and then see if the card is reported lost in the mean time.

Thanks again,

D

[Duncan Rounding]

You could call the invoice address and ask to check the delivery address details with them - we do that sometimes as an additional check. Mind you if 3rd man was red we would refund the order and not ship. It depends on experience and your products really - and of course how much you're prepared to risk.

[The Baby Studio]

Thanks Duncan,

D