This article is intended for vendors. If you, as an affiliate, suspect fraud, please contact the vendor so that they can check the suspicion and report the fraud to us.

Fraud attempts by end customers occur very rarely: far less than 1% of all transactions conducted through Digistore24 are proven to be fraudulent. For this reason, the probability that you will ever become a victim of fraud is extremely low. If you suspect fraud, this article will tell you what you can do and how Digistore24 will protect you.

Please report all fraud attempts! 

Even if less than 1% turn out to be fraud attempts, please carefully check your suspicion of a fraud attempt and simply report the case using the Report fraud function. This will help prevent further potential fraud attempts and make our platform even safer.

What is fraud?

In the context of payment processing, fraud is a deliberate deception of the contractual partner (i.e. Digistore24) or the vendor that results in a loss of money.

Examples of fraud on Digistore24 could be:

• A customer intentionally gives false payment details, meaning that the amount cannot be debited.
• A customer intentionally carries out a chargeback at the end of the return period.
• A customer falsifies information in order to convince a vendor to give a (partial) refund.
• A customer pretends to be an affiliate so they don’t have to pay as much.

How does Digistore24 protect me against fraud?

Fraud detection software

Our fraud detection software works in the background and checks all purchases against some of the parameters we set. The software is primarily designed for large-scale fraud attempts.

The software works on the basis of aggregated data that we have been collecting since 2012. This wealth of information at our disposal means our fraud detection software is already very advanced.

Credit reports

Digistore24 works with Creditpass to protect you from potential payment defaults. This protection is included in the Digistore24 margin.

Before a payment is made, a central database checks whether the customer has attracted negative attention in their bank transactions. This database is linked to Schufa and various other financial institutions: If the customer is flagged on their systems, the payment is rejected in order to protect you from possible chargeback fees.

In order to prevent access to the product in the case of a payment failure, Digistore24 has an API interface which the system uses to communicate with the member software. You can access the interface here: https://www.digistore24.com/extern/test/ipn.

Blacklist

Digistore24 has a blacklist on which we record individuals who are no longer wanted as customers by us. These individuals will be excluded from further purchases on Digistore24.

In order for a customer to be blocked for all purchases on Digistore24, a Digistore24 employee must verify this or the customer must be detected by our fraud detection software. Alternatively, you can also prevent customers from purchasing your products at any time by blocking an email address - you don’t even have to state your reason for doing so!

Here is how you proceed.

Payment defaults/chargebacks

As mentioned before, in most cases there is a misunderstanding or an error on the part of the customer and not an actual attempt at fraud. For example: If you receive a chargeback, the reason in most cases is a faulty account connection or insufficient funds in the customer’s account. In the case of insufficient funds, you can contact the customer and e.g. manually attempt to collect the payment again.

More information on chargebacks and payment defaults can be found here.

How do I report fraud?

First of all, you should make sure that it is actually attempted fraud. In most cases, there has been a misunderstanding or a mistake made by the customer.

If you think that your customer or affiliate has acted in a fraudulent manner, you can report the fraud. This will have the following consequences:

• The customer cannot buy any further products from you.
• Following approval from Digistore24, the customer is blocked from purchasing all products via Digistore24.
• Digistore24 considers legal action against the customer if there has been a blatant attempt at fraud.

Report fraud

To report a transaction as fraud, proceed as follows:

1. In the vendor view, go to Reports > Transactions.
2. Click on the flag symbol Report fraud next to the suspicious transaction.
3. Give the reason why you think the transaction is suspicious.
4. Choose whether you want to accuse only the customer, or both the customer and the affiliate of fraud.
5. Click on Report buyer or Report buyer and affiliate.

The email address is now added to your blacklist, the customer is blocked from using your products and the reason you stated is sent to Digistore24 for further review.

Manually add email addresses to the blacklist

1. In the vendor view, go to Settings > Blacklist.
2. Switch to the tab Email.
3. Enter the email address of the customer you want to block under Email blacklist.
4. You can also specify certain parts of an email address, which means you will block all email addresses that contain those parts.

   Example

   • The email address meier@domain.com blocks klaus.meier@domain.com.
   • The email address meier@domain.* blocks the email addresses meier@domain.net and meier@domain.com.

5. Click on Save.

Tip

Below the Email blacklist field there is a Test field. There you can check if your entry was successful. Enter the customer’s email address and click on Save again. If the block was successful, the message test@test.de:BLOCKED will appear. If the customer has not yet been blocked, the message test@test.de:not blocked will be displayed.