Explaining Visa Resolve Online

Issuing banks have been receiving an increasing number of customer disputes over the years. Unfortunately, many of these disputes are illegitimate; either the customer wants to take advantage of the chargeback system or is confused.

Visa has implemented several changes to reduce instances of friendly fraud, including Visa Resolve Online (VROL). VROL is a platform created to assist in dispute resolution. Through the platform, merchants receive notification of disputes and inquiries from the issuing bank immediately as they happen to help accelerate response and action.

VROL is under Visa Claims Resolution (VCR), an initiative that seeks to reduce the prevalence of friendly fraud and reduce the dispute settling time.

Let’s take a closer look at VROL and Visa Claims Resolution and learn how they improve Visa’s chargeback process.

What is Visa Claims Resolution?

The VCR initiative was created to reduce fraudulent disputes and increase efficiency in processing and settling legitimate disputes. Initially, disputes took on average 46 days to resolve and some even over  100 days, but Visa wants to reduce the time to resolve cases to under 31 days to ensure every dispute is settled within a billing cycle.

Aside from reduced dispute volume and shorter processing times, VCR encourages merchants’ proactiveness through Order Insight, previously known as the Visa Merchant Purchase Inquiry (VMPI ) program. Order Insight allows merchants to send transaction information to the issuing banks in real time after a customer files a dispute. Order Insight prevents potential disputes from evolving into actual disputes, saving money for issuers and merchants.

Under VCR, every Visa card transaction dispute is categorized into either:

• Allocation workflow – fraud and authorization disputes fall under this category. VROL examines case conditions and assigns liability to the issuing bank or merchant in real-time. If the merchant is liable and wishes to fight the Visa chargeback, the case directly jumps to pre-arbitration.  
• Collaboration workflow – handles customer and processing error disputes. Visa automatically assigns liability to the merchant. If the merchant doesn’t accept liability, the dispute goes into representment where the merchant submits additional transaction information to the issuing bank through the VROL for evaluation. The Visa chargeback time limit for merchants’ response was changed to 30 days from 45 days. Learn more about Chargeback Representment

What’s Visa Resolve Online?

VROL is an online platform where issuing banks and merchants can communicate and exchange documentation associated with a dispute. VROL helps to determine whether a dispute is valid or invalid based on the data it has collected. It compares this information including dispute category, transaction data and a cardholder’s complaint to the VROL questionnaire that the cardholder fills out with their issuing bank.

Visa requires issuing banks and processors to respond to a retrieval request, receive transaction information or appeal initial findings through VROL.

The program prevents invalid disputes by verifying transaction authorization with VisaNet and the presence of a fraud report. Before filing a dispute, the issuing bank should run a transaction inquiry on VROL.

Upon receipt of an issuing bank’s request for additional information, a merchant can submit necessary transaction information to aid the bank in deciding the dispute or refund the transaction amount to the customer and avoid a dispute.

Transaction information VROL needs

Though information needed varies based on the reasons cited, merchants often provide:

• Transaction receipts
• Customer identity verification
• Shipment tracking
• Confirmation of delivery
• Evidence of service or product use

A merchant should have a system that collects and records detailed customer and transaction information in disputes. When a customer files a dispute, a merchant should review the Visa chargeback reason codes to understand the customer’s claim. Only then can a merchant determine if they have sufficient evidence to disprove the claim.

Merchants using Electronic POS terminals should capture the following information on receipts:

• Merchant’s name, location, and location code
• Transaction date
• Description of services or products
• Suppressed account number
• Card payment brand
• Expiration date
• Currency symbol and transaction amount
• Authorization code
• Return/refund policy
• Space for a customer’s signature

On the other hand, card not present transactions should have the following information:

• Merchant’s name, location, and online address
• Transaction date
• Suppressed account number and payment method used
• Type of transaction
• Authorization code
• Copy of the invoice
• Product or service delivery
• Customer service notes
• Records of product usage
• Return/refund policy

Does VROL Help with Friendly Fraud?

VROL protects merchants against friendly fraud by offering an easy method to fight chargebacks. However, merchants have to play their part by collecting and recording required transaction information.

By facilitating the VMPI program, VROL helps prevent friendly fraud by offering banks quick access to transaction information, aiding confused customers in determining the charges they want to dispute, and scaring off scammers.

Most importantly, the VCR program gives Visa a bird’s eye view of the dispute system. Consequently, Visa learns of the problem areas in the dispute process that need improving and identifies loopholes that expose the system to manipulation.

What Now?

Although VROL plays a big role in streamlining the dispute process and reducing dispute volume, some fraudulent disputes fall through. Also, using the VROL platform doesn’t guarantee you’ll win chargeback fights. For this, you need a professional chargeback mitigation company like Justt to help you keep what you earned.

Contact us to learn more about Justt’s solution.

Visa Resolve Online FAQs