How can I prevent high risk fraudulent orders from processing?

[jeffchiz]

For whatever reason, we keep getting hit with fraudulent orders.  

At first it was a handful a week until I noticed them.  

I set up a flow to immediately cancel all of them, but  they kept still happening.  

Then I set up a flow and manual capture, and to only capture payments of lower risk orders and cancel all high risk orders.  

But these orders keep happening.  Now I'm getting 5 orders a day, totalling about $1k revenue that get canceled.  Surely there's a way to set it up so "high risk orders" just ARE NOT ACCEPTED?  Why must they be accepted just so I can cancel them. 

My financials are going to show a huge amount to returns per day as a result of these fraud orders being accepted and then immediately canceled and refunded.  

Every app I see is just doing what flows does, which is cancel the order after it's processed. 

How do I PREVENT the order?

[bryan76]

until you find a solution set all orders to manual and only capture payment for orders you want to accept.  people say Flow works for this  but I do not have it set up so I'm not sure how it's done.  try asking on the Shopify sub on Reddit.  

[jeffchiz]

Everything is already set to manual, which is a pain the butt.  I have another flow to manually process any order that's not high risk, and now I'm getting very large (5x AOV) "medium risk" orders.  

I shouldn't have to set up manual nonsense and after-the-fact cancelations.  Does Shopify really not have a way for me to say "if the order is high risk, do not authorize the transaction.  Do not allow them to complete the order"?

[bryan76]

they do yet it is your website.  the med, high low is just a suggestion so you can make a decision as the business owner. don't put this on Shopify.  these automations functionality exist are set up by many people.  you just have to figure out how to do it or hire someone who can.

I manually accept payment for all orders.  literally take less than 10 seconds to accept payment, I can do it on my phone from anywhere and saves me a ton of money.  sometimes you just have to do things yourself

[jeffchiz]

The "decision" I want to make is that I don't want Shopify to authorize for payment any order that Shopify deems "high risk".  Yet Shopify apparently does not allow that control.  All Shopify allows is for me cancel it after they've authorized it.  

I DO MANUAL CAPTURE.  That doesn't affect anything.  My concern is that Shopify AUTHORIZES the payment.  This is before manual capture.  

If you don't know what you are talking about, don't feel obligated to reply.

[bryan76]

you can 100% have the system cancel high risk orders.  until the order is Authorized they wouldn't know be able to give a risk determination so of course it is authorized first.  I do know what I am talking about and could set this up tonight if I wanted.  not that difficult.  you just expect the website host to do it for you when you have to program it yourself.  owning a website does take some technical know how or money to pay for someone with that knowhow

[jeffchiz]

For the 3rd time, I understand you can set it up to cancel high risk orders.  For the 3rd time, that's what I'm doing. 

For the 3rd time, I don't want to have to cancel high risk orders.  I want Shopify to block them from being completed and confirmed.  They should run the authorization and NOT AUTHORIZE it when it is high risk.  For the third time, that is different than AUTHORIZING high-risk orders so I can cancel them after the fact.

[RobertMX]

https://youtu.be/fP17KtWW7Ms?si=8Yx6sIiy6oW3-QQV

[jeffchiz]

That is the process to cancel an order after the fact.  I am aware of how that works.  I was assuming that Shopify, given it has a mechanism to identify an order as "high risk" during the authorization process, could then take it one step farther and prevent any order that their platform has identified as "high risk", from being completed.  Seems like they don't do that...for some reason.

[bryan76]

you cannot have shopify block an order for being high risk before shopify knows it is high risk.  they only way for them to know the risk level is to authorize the payment.  maybe in some fantasy world shopify will do everything and the business owner won't have to make important decisions but in the real world that's not the case.  roll up your sleeves and take some responsibility as a human being and a business owner and don't expect a computer make the most critical decisions of your business for you.  try to act like an adult 

[jeffchiz]

I get hundreds of orders a day.  Am I supposed to "roll up my sleeves" and dive into every single order that comes and validate it?  If Shopify can immediately flag an order as "high risk" during the authorization process, then Shopify can also block that transaction from being completed.   The goal is automation.  You are suggesting I act like it's 1970 and manually make decisions on every order.

Not sure why you feel compelled to be a dick about this. 

[bryan76]

yes.  it takes work and time to run a business.  companies have employees for a reason.  you are spoiled to think everything is going to work without doing the actual work.  any popular high volume ecommerce store has accounts receivable and a risk department.  humans are better decision makers than algorythims for many things. 

shopify can automate it.  we have discussed that.  Flow can do it but only after it is authorized.  

[jeffchiz]

Shopify COULD automate it after it is authorized and before it is transacted, but they do not.  They only automate it after it is transacted.  You understand there is a time gap between "authorized" and "transacted" right?  That is the time they could block the transaction.  Once it goes through the authorization process when Shopify determines it's got a high risk of fraud, then the next step is to actually transact the business with the card company.  They could just...NOT DO THAT, so that their system doesn't automatically cancel the order.

If your solution for this is for me to have someone manually inspect every one of my hundred+ orders a day for the fraud risk setting, your opinions are not helpful.   You can stop responding.

[bryan76]

you have to automate it yourself. Shopify isn't going to read your mind and know how you want to have your business set up.

here are the instructions:  https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/orders/flow 

if you can't figure it out then hire someone to do it but stop complaining that it's not possible because it most certainly is

[AdventureParts]

Hey I was looking for the same thing. I had an order come in with high risk of $1600 and a fee of $47. I canceled the order right away and refunded it but they still charged me the processing fee as non refundable! So realizing I can't afford to lose $47 each time this happens I found this post. I used Shopify Flow and installed it. Scroll down from the main screen and there is a template workflow that already has everything setup. If the fraud risk is completed and the order is not high risk, it then will process the transaction. Hope you are able to get this working!

[jeffchiz]

No, there is no way to Shopify to PREVENT an order from being accepted. You can only set up flows to cancel them immediately after Shopify accepts them, which makes no sense.  

[AdventureParts]

 Im not sure what the problem is then for you. This is preventing the capture payment until after the order risk is analyzed. Otherwise you have to refund the payment and get charged a processing fee. This was my goal to prevent the transaction fees from capturing the payment. I am not sure what you are trying to accomplish then. I attached a screenshot so you can see what it is doing.

[AdventureParts]

You might be confused with an authorization vs a capture. There is no way to do the fraud analysis without trying to authorize the card. This is how it gets the CVV and address check which it uses to calculate the level of risk. This authorization will automatically fall off the credit card in about 2 days if it is not captured. This holds the amount to verify the customer has funds. When you capture the card, this is the point at which you will be charged a transaction fee that is not refundable. I know it is annoying to have them come in into the store at all but it also gives you the chance to contact the customer and see if they are able to pay with a secured method like wire transfer so you don't lose the sale. I think the work flow gets the job done. I just enabled it I will see how it works out.

[bryan76]

you can set up the store to manually accept and accept payment at your leisure.  I wouldn't think about setting up my stores any other way. 

you can also set up an automation in Flow to cancel high risk orders and accept low risk.  many Shopify website orders have it set up that way.  here is how to do it https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/orders/flow. you need to set up an automation to cancel and another to accept