E-Commerce Solutions Continue To Flourish In Caribbean

by Amanda Banks, Tax-News.com, London

23 July 2009

First Atlantic Commerce, a leading international multi-currency payment and risk management solutions provider, and Scotiabank, an international bank based in Canada and the leading bank in the Caribbean, have joined together to offer 3-D Secure services to online merchants in seven countries across the English-speaking Caribbean.

Through this partnership, Internet merchants in the Caribbean will now be able to support 3-D Secure for Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode on their web sites for the first time. The service will be available to merchants in Jamaica, Bahamas, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago, Anguilla, Turks & Caicos and Guyana with rollout to an additional eleven countries in the Caribbean planned in the near future.

“This is an extremely important service for online merchants,” said Andrea Wilson, CEO of First Atlantic Commerce. “The objective of 3-D Secure is to reduce fraud through the verification of the cardholder at the time of payment in a ‘Card-Not-Present’ environment, such as the Internet. When implemented, 3-D Secure protects online merchants from the financial losses associated with ‘I didn’t do it’ chargebacks. We are very excited about making this more available in the region.”

Both Visa and MasterCard offer chargeback liability shift for fraud related chargebacks when the transaction is authenticated through Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode. This also includes liability shift for attempted Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode requests, which means that even if the cardholder is not enrolled, the merchant is not liable for certain Reason Code chargebacks. So the benefits to both Scotiabank International and its merchants are significant.

“The launch of this service to our existing and prospective Internet merchants is yet another way that Scotiabank is helping our clients in minimizing online fraud, while maximizing sales,” said Rob Macdonald Scotiabank’s Director, Merchant Acquiring Services. “We have worked with FAC for many years processing millions of dollars of credit card transactions for a range of businesses and government bodies, and implementing 3-D Secure is a natural next step in the evolution of our solutions to these important customers,” he added.

According to FAC, the primary benefits associated with 3-D Secure are:

• Provides internet merchants with the ability to verify a consumer’s true identity through a secure, electronic, non “face to face” authentication process;
• Enables all parties in an eCommerce payment transaction to transmit confidential and valid payment data;
• Provides verification to the merchant that the buyer is the authorized owner of a card account;
• Offers immediate protection from fraud-related chargebacks.

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