You can protect yourself from unfair chargebacks by collecting the following information (depends on your business):
• Cardholder signature on the pick-up form
• Copy of identification presented by the cardholder
• Details of identification presented by the cardholder
• Purchaser’s IP address
• Purchaser’s e-mail address, description of the goods downloaded, date and time goods were downloaded, proof that the merchant’s website was accessed for services after the transaction Date
Also, when you deliver the order to the customer you have to compare the cardholder's signature with the signature on the card that was used for the purchase. 3-D Secure protects you from the following disputes:
• Reason Code 75 – Cardholder Does Not Recognize Transaction
• Reason Code 83 – Fraud Transaction—Card Absent Environment

We receive chargebacks/disputes from our acquiring bank. Here are the most common chargeback reasons:
• Services not provided or merchandise not received
• Cancelled recurring transaction
• Not as described or defective merchandise
• Fraud
• Credit (Refund) not processed
The acquiring bank also sends you an email notification for each dispute with all necessary information you have to provide in order to contest the dispute.

The term refers to any type of fraud scheme that uses email, websites, chat rooms or any Internet related means to present fraudulent solicitations to prospective victims, to conduct fraudulent transactions, or to transmit the proceeds of fraud to financial institutions or to others connected with the scheme.

Credit card fraud:
A credit card fraud occurs when someone gains financial or material advantage by using a credit card, or information from a credit card, to complete a transaction that is not authorized by the legitimate account holder.

Identity theft:
Identity theft occurs when a party acquires, transfers, possesses, or uses personal information of a natural or legal person in an unauthorized manner, with the intent to commit, or in connection with, fraud or other crimes. Identity theft counts as identity fraud scheme and is a vehicle for perpetrating other types of fraud schemes, especially payment fraud.

Friendly Fraud:
Friendly fraud might not seem so friendly, but this expression is used to group cardholders who initiate chargebacks with no malicious intent. Simple forgetfulness, family members making unknown purchases, and misunderstandings of merchant return policies can all be at the root of friendly fraud. For example, a son asks his Mom if he can use the card to order a limited edition pair of Nike’s from a boutique retailer. When Dad reviews the bill he doesn’t recognize the retailer’s name and thinks its fraud.

Non-delivery payment/merchandise:
A purchaser of goods does not receive the items ordered, or a seller does not receive payment for items sold. Additionally, if the buyer pays by credit card, the seller obtains his name and credit card number and can use this data as a vehicle for credit card fraud.

FBI-related scams:
Scams in which a criminal poses as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to betray victims. For example, a victim receives an email from an FBI official and is informed that he has received an unclaimed inheritance. Then the victim is asked to click on a link and fill out a verification form with all personal information. With this information the identity is taken (see identity theft). There are many similar scams to this, most of all come in email format in which the victim is told that the FBI has been trying to get in contact with the victim.

Computer crimes:
This fraud scheme comprises all categories including crimes targeting a computer or computer network, or crimes that attempt to use a computer or network to perpetrate other crimes.

Miscellaneous fraud:
These crimes include a variety of scams meant to defraud people, such as work-at-home scams, fake contests and sweepstakes.

Advance fee fraud:
A criminal asks people to pay an upfront fee to receive something of value, but does not deliver anything to the victim.

Spam:
Spam, or mass-produced unsolicited bulk email, is a widely used medium for committing traditional white collar crimes including financial fraud, credit card fraud, and identity theft, among others.

Auction fraud:
Auction fraud can be described as fraudulent transactions that occur when entering an online auction site. This can be the misrepresentation of a product advertised for sale or the non-delivery of products bought through an Internet auction site.

Overpayment fraud:
An incident in which the victim receives an invalid monetary instrument, e. g. a cheque with instructions to deposit it in a bank account and to send excess funds or a percentage of the deposited money back to the sender.

A chargeback is a transaction reversal meant to serve as a form of consumer protection from fraudulent activity committed by both merchants and individuals. Cardholders file a dispute with their issuing bank, at which point the merchant’s bank is debited the amount of the transaction that was previously credited. The merchant must provide compelling evidence to disprove any fraudulent activity associated with the transaction. If the issuing bank deems the evidence enough to overturn the cardholder’s dispute, the funds are returned to the merchant. If the cardholder still believes he was the victim of fraud, he can initiate a second chargeback, also called pre-arbitration.

The Customer
The customer is a cardholder who made a purchase with a particular merchant, or is seeing a transaction on his or her statement from a particular merchant that is not recognized. Each card network guarantees zero-fraud liability to its cardholders.

Issuing Bank
The issuing bank provides payment cards (credit, debit, prepaid, etc.) directly to consumers. The issuing bank is the “issuer” (i.e. underwriter) of the account and the responsible financial institution in regards to the disbursement of funds from the customer to the merchant. Note: The customer’s balance and authorization is managed by the issuing bank’s processor.

Issuing Bank Processor The issuing bank processor verifies customer account balances and either authorizes or denies transaction requests received via the card network.

Card Network Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover are the four major card networks. Each provide the transactional rails upon which payments ride and manage the settlement process between issuing and acquiring banks.
Note: American Express and Discover have a unique role. As the card network, issuing bank, and acquiring bank, both the customer and the merchant are their client. Visa and MasterCard are strictly networks.

Acquiring Bank The acquiring bank is the financial institution responsible for acquiring authorization through the card network to receive funds on the merchant’s behalf from the customers issuing bank. During this process, the acquiring bank will settle the funds collected minus their processing fees, network fees, and interchange fees.

Merchant Account Processor The merchant account processor is a company that partners with an acquiring bank to process payments on behalf of the merchant. Merchants typically have a closer relationship with their account processor than their acquiring bank. A merchant’s processor and acquiring bank can be, and often are, the same institution.

Merchant Commercial Bank Account After the acquiring bank acquires the funds from the issuing bank through the card network’s settlement process, it deposits those funds (typically 1-3 times weekly) to the merchant commercial bank account. The merchant commercial bank account is the ultimate destination of funds transferred from a cardholder and is the source of funds when a chargeback is initiated (e.g. the funds are automatically withdrawn from the merchant commercial bank account by the acquiring bank to move back to the issuing bank/cardholder’s account).

Payment Gateway The payment gateway does the complex work of building secure connections to merchant account processors. It acts as a “virtual” credit card terminal which allows a merchant to submit payments to a processor via the internet. It is often analogized as a virtual credit card terminal. Payment gateways also provide fraud filters, recurring billing payments, and other valuable functionalities to assist eCommerce companies.

The Merchant A business, company, brand, service provider, or other relevant party who provides a good or a service in exchange for payments.

As a merchant, you have to be fully aware of the most common reasons why merchants receive chargebacks. These are the circumstances that you also need to avoid at all costs. Note that most, if not all, chargebacks are initiated by cardholders. These are primarily due to inconsistencies in their credit card statements.
• Fraudulent Transactions: The most common cause for chargeback is fraudulent transactions. This happens when the credit card is used without the authorization and consent of the cardholder. In cases like these, the merchant is held solely responsible.
• Credit Not Processed: Another common type of chargeback occurs when the customer may have returned the merchandise to the merchant (e.g. when the cardholder receives an item different from what he expected), requested to get their money back but said credit was not posted to their account. In these situations, merchants are also held liable for the charges.
• Item Not Received: This is one of the most common reasons for chargebacks today. This happens when the customer did not receive the item which they had paid for by credit card. As in the previous situations, the merchant is charged accordingly.
• Technical Problems: Many chargeback requests are due to technical problems during the payment processes. Technical problems between the issuing bank and the merchant may lead to cardholders being charged twice for the same transaction (termed as duplicate processing). Problems with the authorization process can also lead to account being charged, even if the transaction was declined.

These are the four main reasons for chargebacks. There are a few more detailed reasons, which can be attributed to situations such as faulty cards and human errors made during the payment process. These cases, however, may be beyond your control as a merchant.

If you experience a disproportionate amount of chargebacks coded under Fraud or No Authorization reason codes, you need to take a look at your front-end fraud prevention solutions. Do you have enough safeguards in place to stop transactions that are obviously fraudulent? You need the basics; including CVV and AVS. But you can also consider adding automated transaction scoring, rules-based filters, geolocation, device ID, device fingerprinting, or 3D secure tools. Your front-end fraud prevention should be strong enough to protect your business from being pillaged by a large-scale attack.

Strict fraud prevention solutions block legitimate transactions and alienate real customers. While you don’t want to see a disproportionate amounts of fraud-related reason codes, seeing none at all can also indicate a problem. If you aren’t letting any fraudulent transactions through, how rigorous is your front-end fraud protection? Letting some fraud through is acceptable, as you can recover the revenue via responding to chargebacks. Adopt a Goldilocks approach when it comes to fraud-related reason code: not too much, not too little, but just the right amount.

Subscription services, SaaS providers, and lots of other merchants use recurring billing as the preferred method of payment collection. When done correctly, this approach is great for guaranteeing a customer lifetime duration and ongoing revenue streams. However, when done incorrectly, merchants using recurring billing can frustrate a lot of customers. This anger and frustration appears to merchants as Cancel Recurring Billing reason codes. If your chargeback ecosystem is dominated by these types of reason codes, it’s a good indicator that your customer communication needs attention. Is it clear when users sign up that billing will occur monthly? Are you emailing users to remind them of invoice dates? When it comes to recurring billing, over-communication with the customer is always preferred.

The process is similar to legal proceedings, where both parties, in this case a cardholder and a merchant, are given the chance to offer evidence in support of their claims. Retrieval requests sometimes precede an actual chargeback. Here, the merchant is asked to provide basic transactional documentation to quickly validate or disprove a potentially fraudulent situation. Without a doubt, the process is skewed in favor of the cardholder. But, by gathering compelling evidence and responding to the dispute, merchants are able to win cases of friendly fraud and chargeback fraud while building better models to bolster front-end fraud protection.

Step 1:
A customer (cardholder) files a dispute by contacting his or her issuing bank about a particular transaction. These complaints are typically submitted via phone or online form.

Step 2:
The issuing bank reviews the disputed transaction to determine whether or not to send the chargeback to the card network.
- If the dispute is not valid, as determined by the issuing bank, the process ends.
- If the dispute is valid, the process continues to the card network.

Step 3:
The issuing bank provides an immediate credit to the customer for the disputed amount and the networks initiate the flow of funds from the merchant commercial bank account back to the issuing bank.

Step 4:
The issuing bank submits the chargeback to the card network, who passes it to the acquiring bank. Fees are incurred here that are eventually passed to the merchant.

Step 5:
The acquiring bank receives the chargeback and passes it along to the merchant. It typically contains instructions to gather compelling evidence that directly relates to the chargeback reason code. This communication occurs via merchant account processors online portal or an offline letter.

Step 6:
Here, the merchant chooses whether or not to respond to the chargeback.
- If the merchant choses to respond, compelling evidence is gathered relating to the transaction and the customer. Including, but certainly not limited to, date/time stamp, device, shipping verification, address verification, CVV match, device fingerprinting, geolocation, past transactional history, any subsequent transactions from the customer, any communication with customer, and other data.
- If the merchant chooses not to respond, the process is completed and the chargeback is ruled in favor of the customer.

Step 7:
The acquiring bank reviews the compelling evidence and passes the information to the card network, who then passes it to the issuing bank, on behalf of the merchant.
- If the issuing bank determines the merchant’s compelling evidence proves the chargeback is not valid, the issuing bank will decline the chargeback and pull the funds from the issuing bank back into the merchant commercial bank account (via the acquiring bank). This process may take many weeks. (i.e. The merchant won.)
- If the issuing bank determines the compelling evidence does not prove the transactions validity, the process ends and funds remain with the issuing bank/customer. (i.e. The merchant lost.)
Conditional Additional Steps Following Step 7

Step 8:
The customer is given the option to chargeback the transaction again. (Visa refers to this as pre-arbitration, MasterCard calls it a second chargeback.) The entire process begins again.

Step 9:
If the merchant wins the pre-arbitration/second chargeback, the issuing bank can push to arbitration. Which automatically incurs a $250 fee for the merchant.
In full arbitration, if the merchant wins the chargeback, they’ll receive the $250 back. However, if they lose, the merchant is assessed an additional $250 fee.
The duration of the chargeback process is dependent on whichever Visa, MasterCard, American Express or Discover reason code was used. On average, the process can last one month or as long as six months.

Every chargeback ends in one of three outcomes. The chargeback was either actual fraud, chargeback/friendly fraud, or product/service issues. When you receive a chargeback, it’s either coded under a fraud reason code or a non-fraud reason code. However, even though some chargebacks are coded as fraud, responses often prove that they were not fraud. Instead chargeback fraud or friendly fraud was the source. Unfortunately, the categorization of fraud leads many merchants to simply ignore the chargeback, writing them off as un-winnable cases of fraud. Which couldn’t be further from the truth! By responding to these chargebacks, it’s revealed that more than three quarters of chargebacks are really chargeback fraud or friendly fraud.

When chargebacks are lost, merchants lose money—the amount disputed, the chargeback fee and the cost of whatever was sold. Merchants lose the time and money it took during the selling, ordering, packaging and delivering processes of the product.

If a merchant’s chargeback ratio is more than 1 percent, processors can increase fees for chargeback occurrences and even refuse to process payments for the merchant account. Unfortunately, the very nature of some products and services lead processors to consider them “risky.” These high-risk merchants are often turned down by credit card processors, who simply don’t want to deal with the amount of chargebacks that are common in the industry.

Controlling the chargeback ratio should be the top priority of “high-risk” merchants. Which is easier said than done! Once a chargeback reaches the card network, your ratio is impacted. When you consider that the majority of merchants don’t know about a chargeback until it hits their monthly statement, it’s no surprise that high-risk merchants can feel particularly helpless.

Chargeback Alerts give you the opportunity to prevent fees, immediately blacklist a customer, and take action to remedy the situation before a chargeback is received and recorded against your merchant account by card networks. A good alert program includes all participating issuers.

First and foremost, be an honest merchant. Produce quality products, accurately describe what you’re selling, and strive to provide the best customer service in your industry. To avoid chargebacks, merchants should consider the following:
• Excellent customer service
• A customer centric return policy
• Detailed and accurate product descriptions
• Set realistic expectations of the product/service results
• Easy to find shipping/tracking information
• Document conversations with customers

Be prepared for receiving a chargeback, because they will happen. Understand the possible chargeback reasons—currently there are over 151 different chargeback reason codes among the top four networks—and have plans in place for how you’ll react to the different reasons. A free chargeback reporting solution is a great way for merchants to start to understand and eventually manage the chargeback process. If you field a handful of chargebacks a month, a simple solution will help you recover lost revenue. The landscape changes when you start dealing with hundreds of chargebacks a month. Scaling internal chargeback management is not easy; it takes valuable resources away from your core competency. Instead, consider investing in outsourcing the process to professionals.

As such, there are no list of high risk/fraudulent countries or fraud trends from where fraud originates, on the contrary it is very dynamic in nature. Different businesses require different strategies to combat fraud.

Since your account has recently gone live with us and we are not yet fully aware of your business operations. Hence, to protect your account against exposure to fraud we set the default rules till we understand your business and change the rules accordingly.

We pro-actively block the International Credit Card and IP Address Countries to protect the Merchant account from Foreign Fraud.
Your Merchant Account is new to us hence we are unaware of your Risk Appetite and Business Operations in general on preparedness to accept International transactions.

Numerous card issuers nationwide are experiencing international fraudulent activity within their card programs. This fraud pattern is most often linked to information hacking or skimming schemes, and often the accounts affected by these schemes are reported to institutions on compromised account alerts from Visa or MasterCard. The account information obtained from these scams is then used to commit counterfeit fraud, account takeover fraud or card-not-present fraud over the Internet with foreign merchants.

Fraudulent activity is currently most common in the following high-risk countries:

Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Malaysia, United States, Romania, South Africa, Spain, and Turkey.

We want to help you understand that a lot of small countries are a part of Europe that you may not see any business at all and there is no point in keeping these regions open as it merely exposes you to risk of fraud attacks.
For example, Vatican City has a population size of 800, Monaco with a size of 37,000 and Isle of Man with a size of 89,000 where you may never see any business coming through but enabling them would expose your account to unpredictable fraudulent attacks. Also, there are high risk countries in the East European region like Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine where we see fraud attempts on a daily basis.
Therefore, it makes better sense to enable only specific targeted countries from these regions which you will be expecting payments from because from our experience there are a number of countries that we never see any genuine transactions from.

We agree that most of the users in the Middle East use VPNs for various reasons. And this might hamper their shopping experience on your website especially if the VPN corresponds to a country that is disabled because of the fraud rules. However, we cannot enable risky countries for this reason as it will leave you prone to fraud attacks coming from high risk regions like US, UK and Canada. Our suggestion for this issue would be to display a message like ' Transactions made using VPNs might be declined ' on your checkout/payment page resulting in lower declines due to IP country fraud rule.

Majority of the online businesses in the Middle Eastern region only focus on local countries i.e. GCC countries and other major Arab countries depending on the businesses target market. Therefore, the majority of the IPs and cards used also remains within this region.

However, when one takes the example of expatriates living in this region then there are cases where the IP fraud rules remain constant to the local region but the list of card countries enabled becomes large based on the businesses customer base.

And coming to the concern of declining business to genuine customers we have to take into account the fact that there are more possibilities of fraud occurring from regions like US than genuine customers coming through. Unfortunately, we have to deny business to a very small number of customers in order to avoid incurring HUGE losses due to possibility of more fraud transactions from US, UK, Brazil, Romania, Viet Nam, Nigeria and other high risk countries than genuine transactions. Unless of course you are specifically targeting these foreign regions and expect more genuine business than fraudulent attempts then it makes total sense to enable these countries.

More likely than not, it’s the fraudsters who get blocked and who receive the message that the transaction is blocked. Fraudsters are not your customers.

Amazon Payments Services by default offers 3D secure to all its Merchants. The below are the benefits of the 3D secure transactions:
• Proven technology to reduce fraud: 3D Secure is designed to help authenticate the identity of the cardholder through the entry of a unique password/pin. This is a different approach to risk tools such as CVV2 (also important), which help to identify whether the person making the payment is in possession of the card. The ability to authenticate the identity of the cardholder is an important fraud prevention measure, which can help to stop fraudulent transactions being made over the internet using stolen card details.

• Protection from financial liability: Merchants can find that a high proportion of chargebacks are caused by the cardholder denying that they authorized a transaction. An advantage of 3D Secure is that the financial liability switches from the merchant to the card issuer for disputed payments of this type – this is known as a liability shift.

This is a significant benefit to merchants that can result in a reduction in chargebacks and disputes for some types of fraud. A merchant can even benefit from this protection when the Issuer or cardholder is not participating.

Unfortunately you do not have access to make the fraud rule changes on your account. For any changes required please write to us on risk-ps@amazon.com and we will make the changes immediately depending on the risk appetite of the regions we are enabling/disabling.

This service allows the customer to pay for the total amount of an order in installments with their issuing bank. This way, the merchant will be paid the full amount immediately and the customer will clear the outstanding balance with their issuer.

Installments Service is available in UAE, Egypt, and KSA.

Emirates NBD, ADCB, FAB, Mashreq, Dubai First, CBD, Mawarid Finance, Standard Chartered Bank, RAK, Samba, Al Hilal, Emirates Islamic, Dubai Islamic Bank, Deem Finance, Bank AlJazira, SABB, Alawwal Bank, Riyadh bank, CIB, Attejariwafa, Alex Bank, Bank Audi and Banque Misr.

Yes, Amazon Payment Services offers recurring billing that will allow you to charge your customer’s card for a specific amount on a regular basis using the purchase operation configured in single message mode.

Amazon Payment Services provides MasterPass that gives you a chance to inject a bit of extra security and convenience to the payment experience of your customers. The MasterPass button appears on your website checkout page allowing a consumer to interact with their MasterPass digital wallet seamlessly without having to leave your website.

Yes, Make your customer’s online shopping experience more simple and convenient by implementing Visa Checkout that securely stores the buyer’s credit card details, shipping address and any other information.Visa checkout can be offered through easy integration.

Yes, Get paid from social media or anywhere online with any of the payment options and services configured on your Merchant account by generating a payment link that you can easily send to your customers via e-mail or SMS, when the customers click on the link they will be redirected to Amazon Payment Services invoice payment page that displays the order details, amount to be paid and payment methods. Learn more about Collect Service

Yes, Safe service allows the merchant to store the customer’s credit card details in a safe and secure environment and substituting the customer's sensitive card details with a non-sensitive equivalent referred to as a Token.The Token can be used to process transactions without the use of the card details.

Yes. Mobile SDK is a responsive checkout page optimized for screens of all sizes. Enabling you to easily accept In-App payments instead of the traditional, time-consuming, and complex way of being redirected to the mobile browser to complete the payment.

Yes. Merchant Page allows your customer to check-out on your website without being redirected to external sites.

Refund is for the total amount charge as the acquirer return the interchange, However, merchant will be charged only for the normal transaction processing fee.

mada is a new identity of the Saudi Payment Network (SPAN) and the advanced generation of the electronic payments in Saudi Arabia. It is a debit card issued by local banks in Saudi Arabia that allows a cardholder to access funds in their accounts. And it works in the same mechanism of regular ATMS cards with newer standards of security and added-value features.

It connects all automated teller machines (ATMs) and point-of-sale (POS) terminals throughout the country to a central payment switch that in turn re-routes the financial transactions between a merchant’s bank and the card issuer bank. mada debit cards can also be used to make online purchases.

The system permits regional and global acceptance through connecting with other payment systems such as GCC Net, VISA, MasterCard, and American Express to provide mada debit cardholders with a wider acceptance locally and overseas.

No. The business can be registered in any of the countries that we are currently operative in (UAE, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, Kuwait, or Oman). However, to enjoy the preferential rates and benefits of mada service, business needs to have local presence in Saudi and obtain dedicated MID from the local Saudi bank.

Customers will go through the same payment experience as we are enabling mada debit cards on our gateway through integrating with the scheme gateway as an additional processor which already supports a direct connectivity with mada.

• Signing mada agreement
• mada MID (will be issued by the bank and will be configured by Amazon Payment Services) once all documents are sent, the MID will take 10 business days to be issued
• Updated signed Commercial Registrar (CR) and signed National ID from the bank authorized signatory

• mada requires that all mada transactions must have the 3D secure feature enabled. Since it is mandated by mada, Amazon Payments Services won’t approve the 3D Secure downgrade on mada transactions.
• mada requires that all mada transactions should be on Single Message mode: Purchase. Amazon Payment Services won’t permit dual message mode: authorization then capture so on configuration level only single message mode will be enabled.
• If your account is already on Single Message mode (Purchase) and has 3D Secure enabled, no additional technical effort is required from your side. All the MID changes, routing and configuration for mada debit card, will be handled by Amazon Payment Services.
• mada logo should be displayed on your website/application.

A dashboard is a tool that allows you to view your business KPIs at a glance without the hassle of downloading a report and navigating thtough data. This will help you gain insights on your account performance from one page.

You can hover the cursor over the charts to find additional details about the graph. Also the charts provide various views and can be changed to different currencies, channels, time periods etc.

There are multiple KPIs displayed and represented over pre-defined periods of time. Please find a breakdown of the 4 main KPIs displayed:
1) Successful attempts on Dashboard
Successful attempts for which the cardholder has been charged and provided the service or product being purchased.

2) Failed attempts on Dashboard
Failed attempts which did not complete the payment cycle and dropped off during a transaction, it also inidicates the transactions which are rejected by the card issuing banks for various reasons like Dropped, Insufficient funds, Expired card etc. Temporary statuses like On Hold and Processing are not a part of this section.

3) Fort acceptance ratio on Dashboard
Acceptance ratio can be easily defined as the successful attempts percentage amongst the total processed attempts. We also remove the number of refunds while calculating this as they have already been counted once under Successful attempts.

4) Refund ratio on Dashboard
Refund ratio is the percentage of the refunds processed amongst the total number of successful transactions.

Since the purpose of the dashboard is to provide you with a high level picture of your performance, certain transaction statuses are not covered when calculating the numbers on the dashboard. In most cases, the difference in the numbers between the dashboard and the reports doesn’t affect the KPI trends significantly and is good enough to make a judgement of the actual performance.

The data is shared real time on the dashboard and all you need to do is just refresh the page and the updated numbers will be displayed on the screen in the respective KPI section.

At this moment custom dashboards are not available. However, we are working on releasing more features in the future which will let you customize a dashboard of your selected KPIs.

Dashboard is storing the 1-year date range and you can view transactions readily for the same day, day before that and the last month by using the options from the drop down list. You can also customize your date range using the ‘Custom Range’ option. Please ensure you click on ‘Apply’ after selecting the desired range.

Unfortunately, at this time the view is restricted to one account only and can be changed under the ‘Merchant account’ dropdown. However, we are working on releasing more features in the future which will cover this requirement.

Refunds are sent to your customer’s bank immediately. Money will be returned to your customer in 7-15 working days. Sometimes it can take longer as it depends on how long the issuer takes to process the refund.

You need your own refund, cancellation, and adjustment policy. It must be displayed to the cardholder during the order process either on the same screen as the checkout screen indicating the total transaction amount, or within the sequence of web pages accessed by the cardholder before the final checkout.

Go to the main login Page as follows:
Live Mode: https://fort.payfort.com/account-login
Test/Sandbox Mode: https://testfort.payfort.com/account-home

Step 1
Click the Forgot Password tab

Step 3
You will be asked to enter the answer to your security question, as mentioned the on-screen instructions.

Step 4
Please make sure that you have access to your registered email address for validation as the new password instructions link will be sent there; the link will be valid for 72 hours. After receiving the link on your email with the password reset link, you will be directed to a page where you can choose your new password.

Once you log in to your account with your email address and password, please click on the Profile Icon on the top right hand corner of the page. You should be able to see the "Change Password" option as shown below

Our support team is happy to assist you via email merchantsupport-ps@amazon.com and via phone at
+971 4 573 9800. Our office timings are from 9 am to 6 pm Gulf Standard Time.
Please expect delays in responses during weekend and public holidays as we operate at lower capacity.

There is no limitation on the date range and you can view transactions readily for the same day, day before that and the last month by using the options from the drop down list. You can also customize your date range using the ‘Custom Range’ option. Please ensure you click on ‘Apply’ after selecting the desired range.

Financial report is available on the main account level to see the records of all the processed successful transactions for all the sub-accounts. Unfortunately, at this time other reports are restricted to one account only and can be changed under the ‘Merchant account’ dropdown.

Based on your assigned User Role, some of the functionalities and system privileges would be enabled or disabled. Examples of the standard reports on your Fort account are:

Installments Report: This report enables you to view all Installments service transactions within a time period.
Transactions report: This report enables you to view all transactions performed on your account within a time period.
Financial Report: This report enables you to view all successful transactions performed on your account within a time period.
Fraud Report: This report enables you to view all transactions subject to the implemented security/fraud module on your account within a time period

Transactions report: This report enables you to view all transactions performed on your account within a time period.

Financial Report: This report enables you to view all successful transactions performed on your account within a time period.

It depends on the assigned user role to the individual user. Below are the key user roles available on the account:

SuperMainMerchant: This user group is for the merchant’s account administrator on the main merchant level, this user has accessibility to all merchant groups.

SuperSubMerchant: This user group is for the merchant’s account administrator, this user group is able to create six user groups for one specific Merchant sub account. This user group has access to all Functionalities of the Merchant account and Merchant account Dashboard.

Integration:This user group is responsible for the role of integrating the Merchant system to the system. This user has restricted access to the Account general info And user management.

Call Center: This user group is able to process manual orders, the user group has limited access to account information. This group is meant for outsourced call centers.

Call Center Support: This user group has all the privileges the call center user group has in addition to the ability to provide second level support to Merchant customers through advance reporting tools.

Finance Reporting: This user group has all the privileges needed to update the account information, reconcile with the bank settlement files, and reconcile with the Merchant system.

Merchant Finance Reporting: This user group has all the privileges needed to update the account information, reconcile with the bank settlement files, reconcile with the Merchant system, and to perform maintenance operations.

On the Redirection Payment Page, the system would show your Commercial Company Name. Should you wish to amend or update that, please contact our support team via email merchantsupport-ps@amazon.com

Payfort APIs are compatible with all programming languages for both desktop and mobile. We have ready libraries for PHP ,Dot Net,Java, in addition to IOS and Android SDKs that can be used to reduce integration efforts. Our documentation can support you in the right direction and accurate help.

If you are an Amazon customer, you don’t have to create a new Amazon Payment Services account in order to register. You can simply use the email address and password you use to log into to your Amazon account to start your journey with Amazon Payment Services!

If you are not yet an Amazon customer, you can create a new account by following the steps below.

1. Go to https://paymentservices.amazon.com
2. Place your cursor on Sign up button displayed on the top right-hand corner of the page
3. Click Create your Amazon account
4. Complete all empty fields
5. Click on Create an account

You can now use your email address and password to log in to both Amazon (to browse and shop on all of Amazon’s websites) and Amazon Payment Services (to complete your application) because these websites use the same username and password.

Yes, Amazon Payment Services is an Amazon company. You can use your Amazon Payment Services email address and password to shop on Amazon websites and there is no need to create a new account to browse and shop on Amazon.

We care how information about you is used and shared, and we appreciate your trust that we will do so carefully and sensibly. Your data privacy will be governed by the Amazon Payment Services Privacy Policy.

Yes, you can now use the email address and password that you use to log into Amazon to register for Amazon Payment Services.

Yes, you can update these from the Account Settings section in Your Account on Amazon website. Changes made to your name, email or password in your Amazon customer account will be reflected in your Amazon Payment Services account. If you change your email address or password on Amazon, remember to use the updated email address or password on Amazon Payment Services as well.

Reset Your Password

If you've forgotten your password, you can reset it by going to ‘Forget your password’ link below:

Forgot your password

To request a password reset:

1. Go to “Forgot Your Password”.
2. Enter your email address or mobile phone number and click continue.
3. You will receive a code to your registered email address or mobile phone number from Amazon. Please enter the code and click continue.
4. Select ‘Set a new password’ and click continue
5. Please create a new password and click continue to log in.

After you've created a new password, it will become active right away. Your new password will be applicable for all Amazon related accounts.

United Arab Emirates:
• Mashreq Bank
• First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB)
• National Bank of Ras Al-Khaimah (RAK)
Network International – UAE

Saudi Arabia:
• Saudi British Bank (SABB)
• Al Rajhi Bank
• Riyadh Bank
• National Commercial Bank (NCB)
• Arab National Bank (ANB)
• American Express

Egypt:
• Commercial International Bank (CIB)
• Banque Misr
Jordan:
• Network International

Qatar:
• Doha Bank
Lebanon:
• Areeba

Kuwait:
• National Bank of Kuwait (NBK)

Oman:
National Bank of Oman (NBO)

To get start the following documents has to be submitted.
 Government issued Business License / Commercial Register
 Supplemental legal documents such as Articles / Memorandum of Association
 National ID for Ultimate Beneficial Owners of the company Please refer to UBO declaration in point 4
 Tax Card / Certificate
 Proof of Corporate Bank account
 A working Ecommerce website / Mobile App Please refer to website requirements point 4.
Additional documents may require depending on the company formation or business types.

UBO is an acronym for ‘Ultimate Beneficial Owner’, i.e. the person or entity who is the ultimate beneficiary of the company. An Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) is an individual that benefits from or is impacted positively from a company even though they are not formally named as the owner of a business.

Shareholder declaration threshold –
All markets except UAE –
It is a person/company within the parent company that owns or controls over or equal to 25% of the company shares, has the right to exercise significant control over the company and/or has the right to remove the majority of the board of directors. This is applicable for all markets except UAE.

UAE market –
It is a person/company within the parent company that owns or controls over or equal to 5% of the company shares, has the right to exercise significant control over the company and/or has the right to remove the majority of the board of directors. This is applicable only for the UAE.

The difference in shareholder declaration threshold between UAE and all the remaining markets is due to the fact that banks in the UAE follow a very strict protocol when it comes to UBO declaration.
Hence in order to ensure a smooth onboarding process merchants in the UAE market are required to declare all shareholders holding 5% or more shares in the merchant company.

Each online store or online business must meet particular requirements set by card associations and payment service providers. It is important that you have a carefully crafted set of Terms and Conditions, Policies, Refund, Cancellation, Delivery, Contact us. This gives you the opportunity to dictate how conflicts will be resolved, limits your liability and advises customers of special processes involved in transacting on your website. Furthermore, a clear and descriptive website will enable the bank risk assessment team to better understand your business and its process, this ultimately helps to reduce delays in the application process.

Once we have received all the required paperwork and website is compliant, application will be sent to our Underwriting Team for further review and verification, they shall get back to you within 24 to 48 hours for a feedback prior submitting your application to the acquiring bank.

The time it takes to establish a merchant account depends on several factors including: completeness of the application submitted, accuracy of the information provided and any required additional paperwork. Process normally takes minimum 10-12 working, after obtaining the approvals, it usually takes just a few days to establish the merchant account.
In few cases bank process takes longer, if the application is deemed requires additional compliance approval such as multi layered company formation, parent companies based offshore or other compliance concerns which bank may raise during the due diligence process.

Underwriting team underwriting-ps@amazon.com will be actively in touch with bank and will keep you updated on the process

Visa and MasterCard have a very clear policy that is enforced when a cardholder pays for a good or a service:
“The cardholder is entitled to receive the promised good or service. If such good or service is not delivered then the cardholder is entitled to getting their money back.” This is one of the basic consumer protection principles that apply to credit card transactions. In order to mitigate this risk the credit card processor has a screening / application process.

Processors wants to ensure that each potential merchant is financially sound, has a viable business and is operating in good faith and standing.

Rest assured our dedicated underwriting team will constantly follow up your application and provide an update to you on a regular basis.

Whilst your application is under review by the acquiring bank, technical integration can happen in parallel. You will receive an email from our support team containing the step by step guide to create a test account.

You will be notified by our underwriting team. Internally, Amazon Payments Services will coordinate with bank to move the account in production which will take another 3 to 4 working days. Once the Merchant ID is in production, we shall put your account LIVE so you can start accepting real payments online.

No, only merchants with a legal and trade presence where Amazon Payments Services operates in. Provided that you have a company legally set up to these countries, we can secure a merchant account for you to use our services.

No. A business account is a must. The bank account name should be under the same company in which the merchant account will be linked to.

Depending on the country you operate.
In KSA, Qatar, Egypt, Kuwait, Oman a corporate bank account is required to establshied a Merchant account as these bank only supports in house fund transfer.
In UAE, Lebanon, Jordan they facilitate direct fund transfer to any local bank.
Ex. You can obtain a merchant account from National bank of Abu dhabi and use your existing Emirates NBD account to receive your settlement.

No. One MID is linked to one website, however we can create a sub account for your other line of business and apply a dedicated Merchant ID for each.

The types of businesses listed below are updated periodically, but not exhaustive. If you are uncertain as to whether your business is a Prohibited Business, or have questions about how these requirements apply to you, please contact us:
o Drugs, Tobacco
o Arms and Ammunition
o Liquor, Alcohol
o Escort, dating, chatting, matrimonial services
o Lead Generation - Deceptive product/service offering to invite a person to share personal contact and profile details
o Pornography, Adult entertainment, Adult products
o Gambling, Lottery, sweepstake, betting, raffles, draws
o Multi-level Marketing (MLM), Pyramid scheme, Chain or Network marketing - Marketing strategy in which the members are compensated for recruiting new members and further paid for the members recruited by the new members.
o Ponzi schemes - Funds from an Investor is used to pay dividends to the subsequent investor and not from the profits generated on sale of a product
o Intentional sales of counterfeit products or services
o Sales or distributions in violation of intellectual property rights
o Forex
o Money and legal services - Money transmitters, check cashing, wire transfers, money orders; currency exchanges or dealers; bail bonds; collections agencies; law firms collecting funds for any purpose other than to pay fees owed to the firm for services provided by the firm
o Investment & credit services - Securities brokers; mortgage consulting or debt reduction services; credit counseling or repair; real estate opportunities; lending instruments
o No-value-added services - Sale or resale of a service without added benefit to the buyer; resale of government offerings without authorization or added value; sites that breach consumer protection law
o Licensed/unlicensed aggregation of funds owed to third parties, factoring, or other activities intended to hide origin of funds
o Unless otherwise agreed with Amazon Payments Services:
 fund raising, charity, donations and crowdfunding;
 mobile/VOIP top ups;
 online Pharmacies- Includes Prescription/non-prescription Medicines, supplements, steroids, herbals products;
 tele sales, call center (MOTO);
 Software services- Website development, networking solutions, data hosting, software development, graphic designing, web designing, online gaming and any other IT solutions
o Jewelry - Includes Gold, silver, white gold, platinum, diamond, pearl, other gems/precious stones

Yes, with Amazon Payments Services you will enable your customers to checkout with any credit card, from anywhere in the world

You can accept payments in over 80 currencies. Contact us for an up-to-date list of foreign currencies and more information about presenting transactions in multiple currencies.

Settlement of the money will be in either the local currency of the company’s legal setup or USD.

1-2 weeks, it varies according to the bank agreement.

1. Set a new password
Now that your account has been activated, users configured on your account will receive an email with a link to set a new password for your account (please note this link is only valid for the next 72 hours). The Fort has two environments: Sandbox (test) and Production environment. Please ensure you log into the Production environment.

2. Configure your production account
Once you have accessed the Production environment, you need to configure the technical and security settings. You may reference the Account Activation guide to do this. At any point, you may select the “Take a Tour” icon on the top-right on every page for additional guidance.

3. End to end payment testing
After configuring the production account, we recommend that you perform a test transaction with real cards on your LIVE website before offering the service to customers.

A chargeback is a transaction reversal meant to serve as a form of consumer protection from fraudulent activity committed by both merchants and individuals. For additional information, please access the below quick links:

• Reasons for Chargeback
• Chargeback Process
• Preventing Chargebacks

Settlement timing depends solely on your signed agreement with the acquiring bank. This may vary depending on the bank, region and agreement. The standard settlement period with UAE acquirers is 7 days (weekly basis), and 1-2 business days in KSA. We try to make refunds quick and easy. Please note if a refund is greater than 12 months old, chances are it will not be processed. Please refer to the FAQ section below for additional information on refunds. We also understand you may have questions relating to them. Access the below links for additional refund information pertaining to refund timelines, how to process a refund, and more:

o Refund Timings
o Processing Refund
o Managing Failed Refund

You may expand to new geographies by adding a currency. Additional currencies help receive payments by other currencies other than your current one.

To update bank account information with your current bank, switch to another partner bank, update website and commercial name, and for support with applying for additional currencies, please reach out to underwriting-ps@amazon.com.

You can easily manage your account and user roles through the Fort Back Office. Please access the below quick links for additional information.

o Password Reset
o Creating/ Changing User Roles
 Types of Fort Users
 Creating/ Changing User Roles
o Updating Your Account Information

The Fort back office is equipped with two monitoring tools: The Dashboard and Real-Time Monitoring tool.
The Dashboard allows you to view your business KPIs at a glance and without the hassle of downloading a report and navigating through data. Check out the 4 main dashboard KPIs for additional information.

You may also track your customers’ payment behavior in real-time to create more rewarding online experiences by using and setting alerts on the Real-Time Monitoring tool (RTM). RTM allows you to search using a range of criteria which include date range or time, currency, and issuer. Access RTM from the back office and check out this guide for additional information!

You may view your business KPIs, reconcile transactions, and access transaction information by selecting the report type of your choice. Based on your assigned User Role, your access to reports may differ.

Check out the guide for information on what every transaction status reason means, and how to action failed transactions.

We offer a wide range of additional services that can help increase payment conversion.

Apple Pay is a digital wallet which uses a device-specific number and unique transaction code. Card number is never shared by Apple with us or merchants.

The installments service allows a customer to pay for the total amount of an order in installments with their issuing bank. You will be paid the full amount immediately and the customer will clear the outstanding balance with their issuer. This service is available in UAE, Egypt, and KSA. See what banks offer installments here.

Our Collect invoicing service allows you to share payment links through email and SMS- free of charge. Click here to learn more!

You may contact your account manager or email sales-ps@amazon.com for support with activating any additional services.
Access our website for a full list of services that can help you do business better.

You can contact us by selecting the “Tickets Management” tab on the Fort back office or by calling +971 4 573 9800 7 days a week from 9 am to 6 pm Gulf Standard Time.
• For issues related to you may select Support
• For issues related to charge back, risk, etc. select Risk
• For issues related to Underwriting, select Underwriting
• For issues related to Integration, select Integration
• For complaints, select Complaints

You may also email our teams through the below emails:
• For Support, you may email us at merchantsupport-ps@amazon.com
• For Risk, you may email us at risk-ps@amazon.com