What is FraudWatch and How Does it Work?

Shift4Shop's Fraudwatch Program is a special service that actively collects data points associated with your store's orders to provide you with a fraud risk score on the order itself. The information collected includes attributes like the shopper's IP address, banking information, mailing address, and other factors, which are then weighed to provide the risk score.

The risk score is classified into three different color levels of risk with a numbering system to refine the order's fraud classification further. These levels are:

• Green
  the order is generally safe, and you may process the order with low risk to you

• Yellow
  Some of the data points on the order may be potentially fraudulent, so you may want to proceed with caution

• Red
  The order is at high risk of being fraudulent, and you should carefully consider whether to process it.

How do I check an order's FraudWatch score?

When viewing an individual order in your Shift4Shop Online Store Manager, you will see a section towards the top that contains the order's FraudWatch Data.

At first, the order may not have any FraudWatch checks associated with it. To view the order's FraudWatch Data:

1. Click on the Refresh Fraudwatch button.

2. Then confirm the call.

What if I don't want to use FraudWatch on my store?

The Shift4Shop FraudWatch program is enabled by default on your Shift4Shop store. However, if you'd like to turn it off, you may do so at any time by following these steps:

1. Log into your Shift4Shop Online Store Manager.

2. Using the left navigation menu, go to Modules.

3. Use the search bar to locate the "FraudWatch" module.

4. Uncheck the "Enable" checkbox.

5. Save your changes.

You can also use the same steps outlined above to turn on Fraudwatch.

Phone Orders & Fraudwatch

When using the Phone Order system, please be aware that the orders placed in this fashion will likely score a higher Fraudwatch score than normal orders.

This is because one of the parameters used for the fraud watch score is the distance between the customer's destination and billing address compared to the order origin's IP address. In other words, the amount of distance between the IP address of where the order was placed and where it is being billed and shipped to. This distance is something that could be indicative of a potentially fraudulent order.

A phone order is placed by you directly from the Online Store Manager, so the origin IP Address is your network IP. Meanwhile, the customer's billing and shipping address is far different than the origin IP address. So the Fraudwatch score for these orders may be skewed because of this.