Empowering Sellers to Fight Fraud on Their Own Terms

Square has many controls in place to keep our sellers safe from fraud and financial loss. And while we predominantly take a proactive approach, we also empower sellers to be more hands-on and identify their own risk factors. For example, by default we use our own payments data to power machine learning models that warn sellers if an incoming payment has a high or moderate risk of fraud. But we also give sellers the ability to customize their own rules to fit their level of risk tolerance with our Risk Manager tool.

Now available free to many¹ Square online sellers, Risk Manager helps sellers spot and manage potential fraud from online payments they process with Square. These sellers can create rules in Square Dashboard to trigger their own fraud alerts, automatically decline suspicious payments, or invoke 3D Secure — a security measure that requires customers to verify their identity with their payment provider (like Visa or Mastercard) before the transaction can be completed. When a seller gets a risk alert, they can view additional details about the suspicious payments, and can also take action to issue a refund, block the payment card, or dismiss the alert.

In addition to Square blocking transactions from sanctioned countries or other legally prohibited transactions, sellers can choose a number of factors to trigger alerts or declines, from address mismatches on their billing address and payment card, to buyers using prepaid debit cards, to buyers making a purchase with an IP address from outside of the country. This means that sellers with lower risk tolerance can decline more payments, while those with a higher risk appetite can set alerts and review payments themselves.

The Risk Manager tool serves Square’s priority of offering a rock-solid and flexible platform – enabling sellers not just to protect their business but also to thrive in a global digital economy and make more informed choices to protect their businesses.

¹ Risk Manager is included in the processing rate for all Square sellers processing online transactions via Square eGift Cards, third-party API integrations, Square Online, and Square Online Checkout Links.