Ethoca, the industry standard for collaboration-based technology solutions that help card issuers and online merchants increase card acceptance and stop ecommerce fraud and disputes, today announced a partnership with Pegasystems Inc., (NASDAQ: PEGA), the software company empowering the world’s leading enterprises with strategic business applications. The partnership enables card issuing banks to quickly and easily plug into Ethoca’s Global Collaboration Network – the largest in the industry – to automate the resolution of customer service and fraud related disputes without resorting to the costly, people intensive chargeback process.

The rampant inefficiencies in today’s chargeback process cost card issuers and merchants billions of dollars every year while creating a poor experience for cardholders. For card issuers in particular, significant increases in fraud and dispute cases put increased pressure on call centres that strain existing staff trying to keep pace and maintain recovery rates. Ethoca’s flagship service – Ethoca Alerts – solves this problem by giving merchants an early warning on confirmed customer disputes and fraudulent transactions so they can immediately resolve cardholder complaints before ever reaching the costly chargeback stage. This in turn helps card issuers reduce operational costs associated with chargebacks and speed the recovery of dispute and fraud losses.

Through this partnership, any card issuing bank using Pegasystems’ Smart Dispute for Issuers can now quickly and easily connect into the Ethoca Network with minimal IT effort, speed up the fraud and dispute recovery process and eliminate manual intervention. In many cases, card issuers can avoid processing a fraud or dispute claim entirely. Powered by the Pega 7 platform, Smart Dispute for Issuers breaks down operational silos by enabling increased business agility to help automate timely resolution of disputes, claims, and chargebacks. Pegasystems processes disputes for eight of the top 10 ten card issuers in North America.

“Our integration with Pegasystems’ Smart Dispute for Issuers allows us to make participation in the Ethoca Network virtually effortless,” said Trevor Clarke, Co-Founder and EVP, Issuer Relations at Ethoca. “Not only do cardholders enjoy a much better experience, our card issuing customers can now streamline their entire dispute recovery process, ensure 100 percent accurate resolution, significantly reduce their costs of recovery and even expand the universe of disputed transactions they can recover. This includes low value purchases like digital goods that are typically too expensive to recoup through the chargeback process or 3DS transactions where no chargeback rights exist.”

“Every cardholder dispute or fraud incident is a moment of truth for card issuers that can potentially make or break the customer relationship,” said Scott Andrick, Industry Principal, Retail Banking and Cards, Pegasystems, Inc. “Our integration with Ethoca will immediately benefit many of the world’s top card issuers that recognize the opportunity to significantly reduce the cost of customer disputes and fraud while sparing their cardholders from the pain of slow, archaic chargeback processes.”

Ethoca’s global network is growing quickly around the world and includes the largest merchant and card issuer footprint in the industry. Merchant coverage includes seven of the top ten ecommerce merchants, the world’s largest digital goods brands, and more than 115,000 enrolled merchant descriptors. More merchant participation drives dramatically higher fraud and dispute related recoveries for Ethoca’s card issuer customers, now numbering more than 545 worldwide. These include seven of the top ten U.S. issuers, 16 in EMEA (including eight in the UK), eight in Canada, a top three card issuer in Australia and more. Ethoca’s Global Network now spans more than 37 countries.

Integration with Smart Dispute will first be available for customer dispute transactions, followed closely by support for confirmed fraud. Contact Ethoca for availability details.