Monica Eaton’s New Guest Feature for Multichannel Merchant
Faster payments open incredible opportunities in the marketplace. But, as Chargebacks911® COO Monica Eaton points out in her latest guest feature, we may not be ready to adapt to a faster, less-restrictive payments environment.
As in all areas, the market naturally gravitates toward more convenient and efficient solutions to problems. Current payments infrastructure—the automated clearinghouse (ACH) network—is slow and involves a great deal of redundancy. While new technologies make it possible to settle payments in seconds rather than days, it does entail some risk.
“With instant payments, it could be more difficult to track down and recover stolen funds when fraudsters manage to execute transactions,” Monica points out. “It’s a roadblock, because under the 1974 Fair Credit Billing Act, U.S. consumers are guaranteed some means to dispute credit billing. How this carries out is outlined in some detail in the Uniform Commercial Code which is interpreted and applied by the card schemes.”
That’s not to say we can’t move toward faster, more convenient payments technology. Rather, we need to develop a coherent and airtight strategy before undertaking any major overhaul.
“The real hurdles preventing real-time payments adoption are reduced trust on the one hand and ever-increasing eCommerce fraud on the other,” Monica explains.
