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Ethoca Launches Customer Dispute Alerts at 2014 MRC Platinum Meeting

Toronto, Canada; Austin, TX; and London, UK - Ethoca, the industry standard for collaboration-based technology solutions that help card issuers and online merchants increase transaction acceptance and stop ecommerce fraud, today announced that it has enhanced its flagship Ethoca Alerts service with Customer Dispute Alerts from major card issuing banks on the global Ethoca Network.

Merchant businesses around the world face significant chargeback and customer experience issues that come from two primary sources: fraud and customer service disputes. When customers dispute charges for fraud or customer service reasons, they usually don’t contact the merchant directly – they call their bank instead. That creates big problems. In the case of fraud, merchants don’t have a window of time to proactively stop the fulfillment of goods and services (fraudsters get the goods), avoid losses and prevent the chargeback. In the case of customer service disputes, merchants need to respond faster to the customer to address the reason for the dispute and ensure a positive customer experience. Card issuing banks also suffer significant losses from fraud and customer service disputes, including lower card usage, high fraud losses and high chargeback processing expenses.

Ethoca Alerts has long provided the industry’s most comprehensive source of confirmed fraud data direct from more than 20 card issuing banks on Ethoca’s global network. With the addition of Customer Dispute Alerts, merchants can now avoid significantly more chargebacks from customer disputes and create a better experience for their customers. It’s very simple for merchants to get started and realize financial benefits almost immediately.

For merchants and online businesses that want to reduce the cost of chargebacks, they proactively address the dispute by simply refunding the transaction when they receive a Customer Dispute Alert from Ethoca. That instantly resolves the dispute with the customer and avoids the need for a chargeback.

Other ecommerce retailers and service providers turn to Ethoca’s Customer Dispute Alerts because they are focused on the long-term value of customer relationships. Customer Dispute Alerts help these e-retailers respond more quickly to resolve the reason for dispute and enhance the customer experience. For example, a large physical goods e-retailer may elect to ship a better product that makes customers happier, or address a service complaint. They may also decide to simply refund the customer to resolve the dispute. In both cases, the chargeback is avoided, and merchants can get in front of disputes before they result in lost customers and revenue. Industry experts largely agree that it can cost anywhere from five to ten times as much to acquire a new customer as it does to keep an existing one. Ethoca’s Customer Dispute Alerts help keep merchants focused on keeping their existing customers happy, creating a great service experience and avoiding the high cost of customer replacement.

Card issuers that provide Ethoca with customer dispute data also realize immediate benefits by increasing card usage (ensuring cards don’t go to the ‘back of the wallet’ due to a poor experience) and reducing their chargeback processing expenses.

“With Customer Dispute Alerts, Ethoca is adding significantly more value for a wide range of merchants and card issuers across the globe that are facing chargeback and dispute challenges,” said Andre Edelbrock, Chief Executive Officer and Ethoca Co-Founder. “We’re striving to help merchants on the Ethoca Network make ecommerce just about commerce. That means eliminating every opportunity for a dispute or chargeback – whether it comes from fraud or a customer service issue. Ethoca Alerts makes it very easy for merchants and card issuers to participate and get immediate value because there is no guesswork involved – merchants get real-time alerts that come directly from card issuers and take clear action to address the cause of the dispute.”

About Ethoca

Ethoca is the leading, global provider of collaboration-based technology that enables card issuers, ecommerce merchants and online businesses to increase card acceptance, stop more fraud, recover lost revenue and eliminate chargebacks. Through the Ethoca Network – the first and only of its kind in the industry – we are closing the information gap between card issuers and merchants. This unique capability makes fraud intelligence and card acceptance insight available and actionable in real time. Our suite of services delivers significant revenue growth and cost saving opportunities to our card issuer and merchant customers around the world. Nine of the top ten ecommerce brands, seven of the top nine U.S. card issuers, two of the top five UK card issuers and more than 1,500 ecommerce businesses around the world rely on Ethoca solutions and the network that powers them.

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