Use Case: Automate Risk Review with Policies

You can automate risk reviews for Partitions (Facilitator portfolio), Divisions (Referrer portfolios), or Merchants to trigger various actions using Payrix and third-party risk services to perform many different types of reviews automatically. This tutorial will walk you through the steps to leverage Policies to automate your risk Decisions within your portfolio.

Partial view of the Policies page.

Objective

Configure a Policy to automate risk reviews in your portfolio for transaction processing or Merchant boarding.

Audience

Facilitators
Referrers

Environment

Portal (Sandbox)
Portal (Production)

Prerequisites

Prerequisites:

You must have a fully boarded Payrix account to perform any of the actions described in the use case guides.

Warnings

Warnings will provide insight or advice to avoid issues related to risk, visibility, and overall product performance during this use case.

Warning: Some Policy “Stages” are not compatible with specific Decision Actions, the Portal will identify if your configuration is invalid with your Policy Stage.

Tips

Tips will provide suggestions to streamline or better prepare you to apply this use case tutorial.

Additional Resources

Read Understanding Policies - Risk for a detailed breakdown of each Policy component and available values in-depth.

Create a Policy

1. Access the Policies page.

Step 1: Click the PLUS icon next to Risk in the left-hand navigation panel to open a drop-down menu.
Step 2: Click Policies in the Risk drop-down menu to open the Policies page.

2. Add your new Policy.

Step 1: Click the ADD POLICY button in the upper right corner.
Step 2: Enter a Name for the Policy.
Step 3: Select the Stage for the Policy to apply:

Create Entity - When an entity is created.
Pre-board - When the entity is created, but not yet boarded.
Underwriting - When an entity is being risk-reviewed for boarding.
Post-board - After the entity has passed risk review and completed boarding.
transaction - For any transaction processing event.
Activation - When a payment terminal is activated in a payment transaction.
Auth - When a credit card is authorized for a transaction.
Post-Auth - After a credit card has already been authorized for a transaction.
Capture - When a credit card payment is captured.
Refund - When a transaction refund is issued.
E-Check - When an eCheck transaction is processed.
Change Review - When a bank account change request occurs from an entity.

Step 3: Select the Target of the Policy:
- Partition - Your entire Facilitator portfolio.
- Divisions - A Referrer Portfolio
- Merchants - A specific Merchant or Referrer entity.
Step 4: Select the Status of the Policy:
- Active - The Policy is actively applied.
- Inactive - The Policy will not be applied until changed to Active.

Result: Your Policy is now created and ready to be configured with Decisions.

3. Set your first Decision.

Step 1: Click the Add Decision button in the upper right corner.
Step 2: Select a Decision from the available risk services. Then, click Next.
Step 3: Add Sub-Decisions with applicable Subtypes, Operators, and Values for the Decision type. Then, click Next.
Step 4: (Optional) Add any Rules desired using the same parameter types used in Step 3 to further refine the decision action trigger.
Step 5: Click the Create button to finish adding the Decision.

Result: Your first Policy Decision is created, allowing you to create additional Decisions to further refine the Policy trigger criteria using the original decision as a Dependency.

4. Add more Decisions with Dependencies and Failover Dependencies

Step 1: Repeat Steps 1-4 above. Then, click Next.
Step 2: (Optional) Select your first Decision from the Dependencies drop-down.
- This Dependency will require this new second Decision to rely on the original first Decision to return the expected response before initiating the action.
Step 3: (Optional) Select your first (or another) Decision from the Failover drop-down.
- This Failover Dependency outlines another Decision (the first) to resort to if this Decision fails for the designated Fail Reason.

Result: You’ve created a secondary Decision within your Policy to further refine when it will take the set action, using your first Decision’s response as the condition for whether or not to apply the second Decision before the Policy takes effect. You’ve also added a contingency plan for what this second Decision should do if it fails for your given reason. Your Policy is now configured.

Next Steps

Once you’ve configured your automated risk policies for your portfolio, review the following guides for related topics:

Automate Risk Decisions for Groups: Use the Risk Decisions feature to automate more specific reviews for different Groups with different risk criteria using the Automate Risk Decisions for Groups use case.

Conclusion

You’ve now successfully configured a Policy to automate your risk review for Merchant Boarding or transaction processing actions and status changes. You can repeat these steps to refine your Policy as much as needed and automate as many aspects of Merchant boarding or transaction processing as you’d like.

References

Click the links or items below to access any of the following pages: