Visa Announces Verifi Buyout To Resolve Chargeback Issues

Visa, Inc. (NYSE:V) has signed an agreement to buy Verifi, a provider of payment protection and management solutions.

With Verifi, Visa intends to reduce chargeback and give buyers and sellers intelligent, data-driven tools that foster collaboration, build trust, and improve the overall customer experience.

A chargeback is a transaction that a cardholder (the shopper) has disputed and that has been reversed (i.e. refunded to the cardholder) by the card holder’s bank (also called the issuing bank). The reasons may be unauthorized or fraudulent charges, a shopper who paid but did not receive product or service, a shopper dissatisfied with his purchase, or being charged a wrong amount.

Chargebacks are a way of protecting the users but are hard on merchants who face payment reversal, which results in the loss of revenues. Visa will utilize Verifi’s dispute resolution tools with its own suite of risk and fraud-prevention tools.

This buyout will help Visa to reduce fraud and risks involved in payments via cards and make them more secure and reliable. In this vein, the company, has in past, acquired CardinalCommerce and CyberSource. Notably, both the companies specialize in managing fraud and securing payments.

Transaction disputes have been on the rise with the consistently increasing use of cards as a mode of making payments. Addressing the issue of chargeback will fortify the company’s brand name and make it easy for the merchants.

Visa remains the forerunner in the payments industry when it comes to innovation and technology, business growth, mergers and acquisitions. These have driven business for the company with payments volumes of $7.6 trillion achieved in 2018 compared with $3.8 trillion for Mastercard Inc. (NYSE:MA) , $1.1 trillion for American Express Co. (NYSE:AXP) and $159 billion for Discover Financial Services (NYSE:DFS) in the same space.

In a year’s time, the stock has gained 30% compared with the industry’s rise of 25%.

Visa carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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