In a bid to counter 'friendly fraud', Mastercard is expanding its First-Party Trust program to merchants in the Asia Pacific region.
The move comes following a surge of first-party fraud cases, which is where genuine transactions are mistakenly or intentionally challenged by cardholders.
According to a press release, the program can assist businesses with time and resource-intensive issues, such as researching and addressing claims through providing enhanced data-sharing, either at the time of transaction or at the time a dispute is raised.
Through this, issuers can better identify third-party fraud, where someone's details are used without consent, from first-party fraud and gain reliable information to resolve cardholder disputes.
The program also offers two methods for sharing these enhanced insights between merchants and card issuers. Merchants may include enhanced data during authorisation or submit it post-transaction during the disputes process. The program aims to improve dispute resolution using:
- Enhanced signals for issuers that offer greater insight into the cardholder’s purchase history, device details, delivery information, identity elements, and geographic location;
- New rules defining compelling evidence to identify genuine purchases and prevent unnecessary flawed disputes, including merchant chargeback protection for disputes adhering to First-Party Trust data sharing requirements.