What is a link or button payment? Selling merchandise in a store meant asking the customer for their credit or debit card, their ID and passing it through some type of RECORDED. This device issues a ticket that the customer signs on paper in normal times.
Now let’s imagine that this place no longer exists, and turned virtual. Being virtual, you can now sell to the entire country and even the world. Traditional merchants during the pandemic transformed their operations and physical stores into virtual storesand published all their articles on platforms such as Mercado Libre, Facebook Marketplace and others.
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And these traditional merchants were joined by the home entrepreneurs who launched themselves to sell their creations virtually and with little experience. Both, once the client has been captured and the sale has been agreed, either through Instagram, Facebook or their own store, they must close the payment
The challenge became to take that POSNET of the business to any part of the country to process the plastic (Debit or Credit). Payment processing companies such as PRISMA, Mercado Pago and others have created products to meet this need.
So the seller enters the page of these payment methods, selects “create payment link”, stipulates the value of the good, if it is credit or debit, the amount of installments agreed with the buyer and a description. This generates a link that the seller sends to the customer by copying and pasting on your WhatsApp or Facebook messenger and even mail.
The client receives and clicks on the link that he received from the seller and an interaction from the payment company is displayed that leaves him fill in the fields of the card, expiration and security code. Basically fulfilling the role of what was the traditional POSNET that was at the local counter. Once the transaction is approved, the seller receives the “approved” and he sends the merchandise.
So far it seems like a fairy tale, but not all transactions end well. The massification of electronic media and the little investment in education regarding these products, added to an advertisement that highlights questionable values on the part of the banks, cause damage to new sellers that add to the ecosystem.
Even if the payment processor deposited the money in the seller’s bank account as a result of having approved a transaction, this can withdraw the money without asking any permission leaving the bank account in overdraft. That is, anyone with a credit card (even a stolen one) can make this purchase. And then the real owner may be unaware of the purchase if it was a scam. That is to make a chargeback.
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A chargeback occurs, for example, when we are unaware of an expense on our credit card statement. That triggers an action in which the payment processor withdraw from the bank account of the business the amount that we did not know.
The business has to prove that it was a legitimate sale: merchants interviewed with online operations estimate that Between 5% and 10% of sales vanish and are not possible to recover. Stolen money product of the ambiguity of an old system.
The requirements at the time of delivering the merchandise
According to the contract signed by the merchant, at the time of delivering merchandise in a purchase of this style, certain rules must be followed:
- Do not deliver the merchandise to people outside the consigned address, or to minors.
- Do not deliver the merchandise in a place other than the consigned address, nor allow the recipient to withdraw the goods at the addresses of the logistics or transport services, nor changes in the delivery addresses following obtaining the authorizations.
What does it mean? What I can deliver to another person who is not the cardholder but who is of legal age within that address.
What the contract does not say, and in this ambiguity lies the vulnerability of the system, is that if the cardholder with the DNI is not present and the payment is unknown, a chargeback will occur that will not be able to be reversed.
Do the couriers rigorously verify the cardholder?
The only way to eliminate the risk of chargebacks is verify the cardholder with the DNI and the plastic at the registered addressalthough this is not said in the contracts or in the advertisements of the banks and it is quite ambiguous when asking or on the help pages of the banks, it is the reality.
As a result of the pandemic and the digitization of the economy, more and more actors are starting home businesses, but They do not know the details when selling, thus losing their capital.
In 2020, the Mendoza cassation chamber (Matilde Ballerini, Maria L. de Alonzo) ruled in favor of a merchant who suffered this type of scam, but it was granted eight years later, when the product had already gone bankrupt. of fraud.
The risk implied by the use of the system cannot and should not fall on the users or the merchants, both necessary for the operation to be carried out that benefits both codefendants, who receive tariffs and commissions from both the owner and the adhering merchant.