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Consumer Behavior Drives Change in Payments and at PULSE

We recently announced changes to chargeback and disputes rights and the addition of merchant chargeback limits for PULSE® E-commerce transactions. We did this to meet the changing payment preferences and behaviors of consumers, which are largely driven by consumer adoption of mobile technology and increasingly digital shopping experiences.

Let’s take a few moments to review these updates and tips to help you keep up with cardholders’ preferences while getting maximum value from your PULSE debit transactions.

 

What Changed?

  • Chargeback and Dispute Rights – As of August 27, 2018, the PULSE Operating Rules and Procedures, R18.1, v3.0 support chargebacks and disputes for PULSE E-commerce transactions that better align to industry practices. Issuers are required to respond to AVS and CVV2/CVC2 verification requests for these transactions, and do not have chargeback rights for approved PULSE E-commerce transactions if they do not respond or if the response is other than CVV2/CVC2 Verified and Matched. In addition, merchants may dispute chargebacks by providing compelling evidence as detailed in the Representment Section of the PULSE Disputes Rules, v2.0. These changes do not apply to gift cards. See the rules for additional details.
  • Chargeback Limits and Monitoring – Also as of August 27, 2018, we require e-commerce merchants to maintain a 1 percent or less average monthly chargeback-to-sales transaction-count threshold. Merchants unable to maintain the required threshold may lose their ability to route these transactions to issuers through PULSE.   

Want to Stay On-Trend?

We have steadily expanded PULSE E-commerce, PULSE PAY® Express and other PINless transactions in recent years. We aim to offer issuers and merchants competitive options anywhere debit cards are accepted – in both the card-present and card-not-present environments.

With all this change, it’s the right time for you to review steps your institution can take to make the most of these transactions. In short, your institution should treat PINless transactions from PULSE similar to comparable transactions from other networks.

Following are a few tips:

  • Use similar cardholder verification methods for e-commerce payments, and other transactions from EFT debit networks that are not verified by a PIN, that you use for similar Discover, Visa and Mastercard debit transactions.
  • Apply the same fraud-monitoring tactics already in place for Discover, Visa and Mastercard debit transactions to e-commerce payments, and other transactions from EFT debit networks that are not verified by a PIN.

Want to Talk About It?

Click here to request a call, contact your Account Executive or call us at 877-247-8573.