It’s difficult to imagine life without friendly fraud. Spouses would give the wrong answer to the question, “Does this make me look fat?” Without friendly fraud you couldn’t plan a surprise party. But in e-commerce, friendly fraud poses the question, “Can I get stuff for free?” and the answer is, “Yes, and it’s easy to do.”

Also known as “casual fraud,” all the perpetrator has to do is reverse a charge. For digital goods or subscriptions to online services, you can’t get the product back. For physical goods, it costs money even if you ultimately reclaim the item. How can you catch a fraud perpetrator with a perfectly legitimate method of payment? Most merchants believe that you can’t – not the first time at least. It’s the cost of doing business most say, but that isn’t always true.

This is where PaxGuard™ comes in. Although it does not store personal information about customers, it can track payment reversal history through its Intelligence Network. Friendly fraud’s ease is also its vulnerability. These fraudsters don’t open and close credit card and bank accounts frequently. They’re not organized or sophisticated about fraud.

These fraudsters are usually trying to get free stuff of limited monetary value. Their vulnerability is their means; they have legitimate payment methods that leave a record and seldom change. You, as a merchant employing PaxGuard, can set a limit on the number of reversals that you will accept for a customer, even if that customer has never visited your site before.

You know your customers and your business. This will guide your tolerance for reversals. Some reversals are perfectly legitimate. Some physical goods arrive broken. The lumberjack who ordered blue overalls is sent a black cocktail dress. If a customer downloaded Bon Jovi when they’ve previously only purchased Bach, chances are they had a pretty good reason to reverse the charge.

PaxGuard is at your command. The default settings are suitable for most businesses. Even if you set your risk tolerance low and have zero tolerance for reversals, PaxGuard can provide every customer with a way to pay. If they’re set on committing fraud – friendly, casual, or even criminal – they will leave on their own.

Charlottesville, VA (October 16, 2008) – Drawing upon its ten years of experience in the online payment processing market, PayByCash® today launched PaxGuard™ which will reduce payment fraud-related expenses and lost revenue for e-commerce merchants of any size. PaxGuard not only reduces the expense of fraud, it also offers no-risk payment options for high risk customers via PayByCash.

PaxGuard uses a suite of detection rules and market-leading fraud detection technologies. It employs a vast, ever expanding network of payment and fraud intelligence to determine the risk of fraud. Rules are configured and managed by merchants to suit the unique risk tolerances of their enterprise. High-risk customers can be converted using PayByCash’s no-risk payment methods. Thus merchants can set their risk tolerance as low as they like and not turn away legitimate, paying customers.

“Proprietary elements of PaxGuard have long been used by PayByCash to cut fraud rates for our merchants,” said Kevin Higgins, president of PayByCash. “Now we’ve layered in technology from strategic partners with complementary approaches to fighting fraud. What we have now is something remarkably effective and comprehensive, a phenomenally powerful product. It’s the only fraud protection solution that protects merchants across a broad range of payment methods. This is critical in an environment where more merchants are accepting numerous payment methods.”

PaxGuard has an extremely effective default configuration. Every setting, however, can be customized, enabling merchants to set their risk tolerances based on their specific business and the payment methods they accept. PaxGuard provides a number of on-demand reports that help merchants gain insight into the incidence of fraud on their site and tune their detection rules to better prevent fraud while maintaining a positive customer experience.

“PaxGuard protects e-commerce merchants from both technically sophisticated fraudsters using illegal techniques such as phishing and identity theft to make fraudulent purchases, and so-called ‘friendly fraud’ which can be perpetrated by any legitimate customer,” said Christopher Corry, product manager of PaxGuard. “With a single integration to PaxGuard, e-commerce systems receive the protection of many best-of-breed fraud detection solutions for all of their payment methods.”

About PayByCash®

PayByCash® has empowered non-credit card customers and the Internet businesses that want to reach them since 1998. PayByCash, now protected by PaxGuard, offers more than 70 payment methods with a global reach, typically with no transaction fee to its 200 merchants. Most payment methods are not reversible. One straightforward integration gives merchants all the PayByCash payment options, including Ultimate Game Card™, the game industry’s best known pre-paid card. PayByCash handles all foreign currency acceptance and alternate payment option customer support.

For more information about PayByCash, visit www.paybycash.com. PayByCash is a subsidiary of PlaySpan, Inc.

About PLAYSPAN™

PlaySpan™ is the game industry’s first publisher-sponsored™ in-game commerce™ network. PlaySpan’s patent-pending in-game search, commerce and micropayment technologies enable game publishers and developers to generate new revenues, acquire new users and extend the loyalty of existing users. Leading game providers and virtual world publishers have selected PlaySpan as their official marketplace for virtual goods commerce.

PlaySpan is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices in Charlottesville, VA, Cincinnati, OH and Mumbai, India. Investors include Easton Capital, Menlo Ventures, STIC and Novel TMT Ventures.
For more information about PlaySpan, visit www.playspan.com.

Please join us for the following upcoming webinars:

• “The Value of PaxGuard™”
• “Integrating and Using PaxGuard™”

The Value of PaxGuard™ — October 22, 2008, at 2PM EDT

Discussion regarding the value PaxGuard can provide to your e-commerce operation.

Agenda:

• The PaxGuard Fraud Prevention Solution
• Benefits to E-commerce Sites
• Features
• Integration Overview
• Questions/Answers

Register now.

Integrating and Using PaxGuard™ — November 20, 2008, at 2PM EST

Discussion of integration with PaxGuard and a demonstration of using the PaxGuard system.

Agenda:

• PaxGuard Overview
• API Review
• Merchant Site Demonstration
  • Creating Rule Sets
  • Running Reports
  • Tuning Rule Sets
  • Customer Service
• Questions/Answers

Register now.