How does Amiko double efficiency in chargebacks? Why is it only the beginning?

An Interview with Daniela Franzin, Head Dispute and Claim Resolution at Viseca Card Services SA

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Nov 03, 2021

Daniela Franzin started her career in the payment industry in 1987. Since the beginning, she has been focused mainly on risk management and risk operations, including fraud, fraud prevention, disputes, debt collection and debt management. Throughout her career, she has led several chargeback teams on both the issuing and acquiring sides. She is Head of Dispute and Claim Resolution at Viseca Card Services SA in Switzerland.

What are the main challenges you see in the chargeback process?

In the chargeback process, we are constantly working against time. Therefore, the primary challenge of every chargeback team lead is to enable the team to process more disputes in less time.

Analysing a dispute involves a few steps, like getting a cardholder statement, preparing the documents, submitting the chargebacks and communicating with the cardholder. All these have to be done on time to meet the chargeback timeline and keep the cardholder updated about the latest status. Failing to do so means losses for card issuers and additional customer calls for the chargeback team.

What makes the ideal chargeback solution from your perspective?

As mentioned, the chargeback process consists of collecting cardholder statements, preparing the documents, submitting the chargebacks, crediting and communicating with the cardholder. While most chargeback tools cover the “submission” part of the process, for me, an ideal chargeback solution should bring all these parts together. Only then can the team work efficiently without switching between several systems and having media breaks between the team and cardholders.

What makes a chargeback team efficient is to be able to:

Interact easily with cardholders for collecting cardholder statements and follow-ups;
Automate the creation of chargeback cases;
Submit several chargebacks in one go;
Automate side processes, such as a cardholder account adjustment and cardholder communication about the status of their dispute.

These tasks can take tremendous time, which can be better invested in analysing more chargebacks and not missing the timelines.

Why did Viseca choose Amiko over other alternative chargeback solutions?

The first time I saw the very first version of Amiko, I could tell that the product had been designed and developed with operational issues in mind. It was apparent that the people who have built this solution understand the chargeback process and the challenges card issuers face.

In addition, we appreciate the open approach of Rivero in involving customers in product development. From the beginning, we have been actively engaged with Rivero. The Rivero team always takes our ideas and suggestions seriously, which we often do not experience in this domain.

What was your first experience working with Amiko?

Amiko is the easiest-to-use chargeback solution I have ever seen. I had 45 minutes of training a few months before we went live. The first time I logged in to Amiko, I did not need to get back to the training materials to find my way around the interface. Amiko is exceptionally user-friendly, intuitive and self-explanatory, and for a chargeback team lead, there is nothing more important than easy team training. Whenever we onboard new team members, we spend about 1.5 hours sitting with them, letting them work with Amiko, and just giving them some tips. After that session, they can work independently and without additional training.

Another thing that excites me about Amiko is how efficient and fast we can work. The user interface is truly designed to do way more with fewer clicks and in much less time. Also, several features such as bulk case creation (to create hundreds of cases at once) and bulk chargeback submission (to submit several chargebacks at once) save us a lot of time and effort.

What do you enjoy or appreciate the most about Amiko?

In my career in the chargeback domain, I have worked with several chargeback applications. However, I have never seen a solution that includes everything. So basically, with Amiko, you have it open in the browser and have everything you need right there. Whether you want to communicate with the cardholder, see the transaction details, prepare the documentation, submit the chargebacks or make the cardholder account adjustment, they can all be done in one place. These capabilities and a user-friendly and self-explanatory interface make working with Amiko and onboarding new team members very easy.

Do you have any results on the efficiency gain to share with us?

We calculated how much time it takes for a chargeback analyst to submit a regular chargeback (with a common reason code) in 3 different chargeback systems: 1) the chargeback application we used before, 2) the portal of one of the payment networks and 3) Amiko.

In our calculation, we also considered the time spent on all preparation needed before submitting the chargeback. The result showed that a chargeback analyst can handle double the number of chargebacks with Amiko compared to the industry-leading chargeback solution. Comparing Amiko with the chargeback portal of a payment network, we can process 2.5 times more chargebacks during the same time it takes on the portal of a payment network.

The efficiency gain becomes even more significant when comparing the time spent submitting multiple chargebacks on the same card, which is quite common, especially for fraud-related chargebacks. Contrary to other chargeback systems, with Amiko, there is no need for repetitive steps, meaning handling ten or more chargebacks takes the same time as handling a single one.

In our calculations, we focused on the process in the back office (analysing and submitting). For example, we did not consider the time it takes to communicate with the cardholder or adjust the account. Considering those, I expect the efficiency to increase even more, especially once we roll out the Amiko bi-directional cardholder channel and self-servicing.

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What is the next feature of Amiko that you will roll out? And how do you expect that to help you even more?

We will roll out the bi-directional channel between the cardholder and the chargeback analysts in a few months. I expect that it will improve the efficiency even more in two ways:

We can communicate and collect the required information from the cardholder much faster via digital channels.
Whenever the cardholder starts a dispute from the app, the created dispute case will have all the information (documents, reason codes) needed to be submitted to the payment network. For common chargeback cases (e.g., no cardholder authorisation), such disputes can be directly submitted to the payment network without the involvement of the back-office team. Therefore, the team can focus on more complex dispute cases.

We believe this next step will increase the efficiency of our teams even more. Of course, we will closely monitor how opening such a channel can impact the chargeback volume. To do this gradually, we will first start with the back-office initiated cases, where we reach out to the cardholders for additional input via the digital channel. In the next step, we will then open up the self-servicing part.

How was your experience with the integration project and working with Rivero?

I have one word for it: Excellent! It’s great to talk to people who know what they are doing.

I have years of experience working with service providers, explaining the business needs and operational challenges in the chargeback domain. With Rivero, it has been effortless. We feel that the people building Amiko have a deep understanding of the chargeback domain and listen carefully to the needs and wishes of their customers.

Would you recommend Amiko to other card issuers? Why?

I strongly recommend card issuers consider Amiko and invest in this outstanding solution. I think every card issuer needs to start looking into efficiency sooner or later, and chargeback is one of those processes with great potential. Therefore, I am confident that investment in solutions like Amiko will undoubtedly pay off in efficiency and improve cardholder experience in this process.

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A guest post by

Fatemeh Nikayin

Rivero co-founder 🚀 #fintech #payments #growth