Mastercard and Ethoca announce new support for retailers to combat chargebacks and fraud during COVID-19

Qualifying retailers in Australia and New Zealand offered free access to Ethoca Alerts, a market-leading fraud and chargeback dispute resolution service

Mastercard and Ethoca announced a new support package for all retailers in Australia and New Zealand to help tackle fraud and chargebacks. The offer will include free access to the market-leading fraud and chargeback dispute resolution service Ethoca Alerts until July 31, 2020.

To adapt to a more digital world, businesses need to evolve their presence online. With greater e-commerce offerings, retailers face the risk of rising disputes, chargebacks and fraud – all of which can be costly and time-consuming.

Ethoca Alerts, an award-winning solution, offers small, medium and large organisations a more efficient and effective way to identify, manage and resolve fraud and chargeback disputes. In the past 12 months, Ethoca Alerts has helped businesses around the world prevent more than 7 million chargebacks and nearly US$200 million worth of fraud[1].

Eliminating unnecessary chargebacks and related dispute processing expenses makes life easier for consumers, businesses and issuers. On average, resolution for chargebacks can take between 10 and 120 days.

By facilitating the exchange of fraud data and chargeback intelligence between more than 5,000 of the world’s leading banks and card issuers and more than 8,000 retailers, Ethoca Alerts provides businesses with greater transparency and near real-time notifications of active disputes. This can often reduce the dispute process from up to six weeks to just days, hours or minutes. Additionally, retailers can minimize inventory loss, lower operational and dispute management costs, deliver a better customer experience and retain customer loyalty.

From today, Mastercard is inviting qualifying retailers across Australia and New Zealand to request access to its real-time alerts platform as part of a no-fee trial until July 31, 2020. Setup is quick and easy, with more information available here.

Brett Small, General Manager, Asia Pacific, Ethoca said: "As businesses around the world adapt to a new normal where e-commerce takes center stage, many retailers may be facing card-not-present fraud and chargebacks for the first time. Ethoca’s goal is to drive both issues out of the ecosystem once and for all by enabling collaboration between banks and merchants to share vital intelligence that combats the problem. In making Ethoca Alerts available to qualifying retailers around Australia and New Zealand for no charge, Ethoca hopes to provide local businesses with a little relief as they adapt to their new way of working.”

Richard Wormald, division president, Mastercard Australasia said: “Mastercard is committed to exploring new ways to support its customers and community as everyone faces the ongoing challenges presented by COVID-19. Fraud and chargebacks can often incur significant costs to retailers of all sizes and the impact of these issues is only heightened in the current climate. As Mastercard continues on its mission to empower retailers both small and large to navigate this new normal, Mastercard is proud to play a part in helping local businesses tackle this issue so they can focus on what they do best.”

Mastercard continues to invest in solutions to help its customers, cardholders and communities tackle COVID-19. Recent efforts include championing an increase in contactless payment limits across the world, making its award-winning STEM curriculum, Girls4Tech, available online and working closely with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Wellcome to speed development and access to therapies for COVID-19. For more information on the company’s efforts, visit the Mastercard Newsroom.

For more details on how consumers can best navigate billing disputes in the COVID-19 era, visit the Mastercard Content Exchange.


[1] Ethoca internal research, 2020