What types of fraud does Prevent protect against?
Friendly fraud: a real customer disputes a valid purchase, such as claiming “item not received” on a delivered order.
Third-party fraud: a purchase made with a stolen card or stolen identity.
Return and refund abuse: a customer repeatedly returning items or filing false refund claims.
What is friendly fraud?
Friendly fraud happens when the actual cardholder disputes a legitimate purchase to get their money back while keeping the goods. They usually claim the item never arrived or wasn’t as described. Card networks also call this “first-party misuse.”
What’s the difference between friendly fraud and chargeback fraud?
The terms are often used interchangeably. Strictly speaking, friendly fraud covers any dispute the real cardholder files on a valid purchase, including honest mistakes like not recognizing a charge. Chargeback fraud usually means the deliberate version: filing a false claim to get goods for free.
Both are different from third-party fraud. There, a criminal uses a stolen card, and the real cardholder’s dispute is legitimate.
How does Prevent stop fraudulent chargebacks?
Prevent screens every order after payment and before you ship. Each order gets a risk score from 0–100 — the higher the score, the riskier the order — along with one of three recommendations:
Proceed: Low risk. Ship as normal.
Verify: Elevated risk. The buyer confirms the order and their identity through a short verification step.
Cancel: High risk. Hold or cancel the order before it ships.
You can apply these recommendations automatically using your own rules, or review them in the dashboard. The verification step (coming soon) carries your branding and is run entirely by Chargeflow, and each completed verification serves as evidence if the order is disputed later.
Do refunds triggered by Prevent avoid chargebacks?
In most cases, yes. When you cancel and refund a high-risk order before it ships, the customer already has their money back, so there’s usually no reason to dispute. You also keep the product and the shipping cost. If a dispute is still filed, the refund record is your evidence.
How does AI detect potential fraud?
Prevent focuses on the buyer, not just the transaction. Its AI combines many signals, including:
Identity linking: connects different buyers to recognize the same person even when they use different accounts.
Customer history: the buyer’s past purchases, chargebacks, and returns.
Network intelligence: patterns from the Chargeflow Network of 20,000+ merchants, so a buyer who abused another store can be flagged at yours.
The models learn from every fraud attempt, so accuracy keeps improving.