Instant Payments Regulation (IPR): Merchant Readiness Checklist for 24/7 Euro Transfers
Instant euro transfers are no longer an optional upgrade. With the Instant Payments Regulation (IPR), they are becoming a regulatory…
Chargebacks vs Refunds vs Reversals: Dispute Language Merchants Must Get Right in 2026
By 2026, most chargeback losses are no longer caused by fraud alone. They are caused by misunderstanding. Across payments teams,…
Instant Payments Explained: What Real-Time Really Means for Merchants in 2026
Instant payments have moved from “emerging” to expected in a surprisingly short amount of time. In many markets, customers now…
Payment Terminology That Gets Merchants Flagged in 2026: What Acquirers Actually Mean
Most merchants don’t get flagged because they’re doing something wrong. They get flagged because they describe themselves in ways that…
Fake Accounts That Pay (2026): Stopping “Fraud-Funded Onboarding” Where Bots Create Users, Attach Payment Methods, and Monetize Fast
By 2026, fraud no longer waits for scale. It manufactures it. The most damaging fraud patterns facing digital merchants today…
Carding (Card Testing) in 2026: The Merchant Defense Playbook That Stops BIN Attacks Before They Reach Your Acquirer
Card testing used to sit in an awkward corner of fraud operations. Everyone knew it existed, most teams dealt with…
Visa VAMP + Enumeration (2026): Why BIN-Range “Card Testing” Now Creates Measurable Scheme-Program Risk
For years, card testing and enumeration lived in an uncomfortable grey zone. Everyone knew it was bad. Everyone dealt with…
Card Testing Defense 2026: The Modern Tool Stack (Bot Management + Adaptive Rate-Limiting + “Auth Hygiene”)
Card testing has evolved into a form of automated reconnaissance rather than opportunistic fraud. In 2026, attackers no longer rely…
Impersonation Fraud 2026: How Fraud Models Detect “Someone Pretending to Be You” Before Payments and Payouts Are Approved
Impersonation fraud has emerged as one of the most consequential identity risks facing payment ecosystems in 2026. Unlike traditional fraud…
Mastercard Disputes 2026: Building “Compelling Evidence by Design” Using the 2025 Chargeback Guide
For years, chargeback prevention and chargeback recovery were treated as separate disciplines. Prevention focused on reducing disputes through fraud controls…
The Gulf’s Wallet Push: Why Digital Wallet Regulation Is Reshaping Consumer Payments in the UAE & Saudi Arabia
Across the Gulf, digital wallets are no longer treated as lightweight fintech add-ons. By 2026, regulators in the UAE and…
Pre-Dispute Alerts 2026: How Ethoca/Verifi-Style “Early Warning” Workflows Reduce Chargebacks Before They Exist
Chargeback management has traditionally been reactive. A dispute is raised, evidence is gathered, representation is submitted, and the outcome is…
Real-Time Transaction Monitoring 2026: Moving From Batch Alerts to Always-On Risk Decisioning (and Cutting False Positives)
For years, transaction monitoring has operated on a delayed logic. Transactions were processed, alerts were generated in batches, and risk…
From Rules to Probabilities: How Risk Scoring Frameworks Are Shifting to “Likelihood × Impact” Models in 2026
For years, fraud and risk systems have been built around a simple assumption: a transaction is either safe or unsafe.…
Japan’s Long Goodbye to Cash: How New Digital Payment Policies Are Forcing Merchants to Rethink Acceptance in 2026
Japan has been saying goodbye to cash for years, just not loudly. Unlike markets where governments force abrupt transitions, Japan’s…
Transaction Risk ≠ Customer Risk: Why 2026 Scoring Frameworks Separate Identity Trust from Payment Intent
In 2026, one of the most persistent failures in fraud prevention is not a lack of data or sophistication, but…
Context-Aware Risk Scoring 2026: Why Time, Channel, and Behaviour Now Outweigh Static Fraud Signals
Fraud in 2026 rarely announces itself through obvious red flags. The most damaging payment losses increasingly originate from transactions that…
The Post-Card Era: How Tokenised Deposits & Embedded Finance Are Replacing Traditional Rails by 2026
For four decades, card networks have shaped how global commerce works. They enabled online payments, cross-border acceptance, and scale but…
Europe’s Instant Payments & Open Banking Landscape 2026: Where A2A Can Replace Cards for High-Risk Merchants
Europe’s payment landscape is undergoing one of its most significant structural shifts in a decade. With the EU’s Instant Payments…
European Wallets & APMs 2026: How Wero, Klarna, iDEAL & Local Rails Change Checkout Strategy for High-Risk Merchants Outline
Introduction For more than a decade, European e-commerce was shaped by a predictable checkout pattern: cards first, PayPal as backup,…
CBDCs & High-Risk Payments 2026: How Central Bank Digital Currencies Will Reshape Acquiring, Settlement & Merchant Risk
Until recently, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) sounded like a distant policy experiment interesting to economists, but disconnected from real…
Dynamic Risk Orchestration: How 2026 Payment Stacks Combine AI, SCA Exemptions & Real-Time Routing to Balance Fraud and Conversion
For years, merchants relied on fixed fraud rules and predictable authentication flows to manage risk. A transaction was either safe…
Payment Funnel Intelligence 2026: How to Benchmark Declines, Friction, Routing & 3DS by BIN, Issuer and Geography
Most merchants track approval rates, but very few understand why their payments fail and almost none analyse declines at the…
Fraud Velocity & Transaction Sequence Modelling: The 2026 Guide to Detecting Bot Attacks, Card Testing & Rapid-Fire Abuse
Over the past two years, fraud has changed shape. Instead of slow, isolated attempts, PSPs are now seeing bursts of…
Early-Warning Systems for Fraud: How 2026 PSPs Predict Chargebacks Weeks Before They Happen
Chargebacks rarely begin at the moment a customer files a dispute. By 2026, PSPs will have learned that the earliest…
Predictive Risk Models 2026: How Merchants Use Behavioural, Device & Payment Graph Data to Prevent Fraud Before Checkout
Fraud in 2026 no longer behaves like a series of isolated attacks that merchants can block with static rules, velocity…
Cross-Rail Payment Optimisation: Using Data to Balance Cards, A2A, Wallets & APMs in High-Risk Markets (2026 Edition)
The era of relying on a single payment rail is over. By 2026, merchants operating in high-risk and cross-border environments…
Real-Time Payments Diagnostics: How Merchants Use Live Issuer Feedback, Risk Scores & Acquirer Health Signals to Optimise Acceptance in 2026
For years, merchants optimised their payment performance using static rules: fixed routing preferences, monthly acquirer reviews, and after-the-fact reporting. That…
AI in High-Risk Underwriting: How PSPs Use Machine Learning to Assess Merchant Risk Profiles, Chargeback Probability & Business Model Red Flags
Underwriting has entered a new era. By 2026, the volume, complexity and global distribution of high-risk merchants have evolved far…
The 2026 Merchant Underwriting Framework: How PSPs Assess High-Risk Businesses Under PSD3, FCA & Global AML Standards
Merchant underwriting is undergoing its most significant transformation in over a decade. What was once a largely documentation-driven onboarding checkpoint…

