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What is Fraud Protection?

Fraud Protection is an integrated risk management solution that uses PayPal intelligence and advanced machine learning to help you fight fraud. It allows you to customise fraud filters based on your unique tolerance for risk and business needs, helping you to balance chargebacks and declines better.


To launch Fraud Protection, go to your Business Tools.

The tool includes:

  • Dashboard: visually displays high-level information about payments, revenue and chargebacks for a selected time period.
  • Filters: displays a list of filters along with their conditions that can be used to help approve or reject incoming payments. Changes made to filters can be tested on your historical transaction data to help you understand the impact of those changes before activating them.

What are Fraud Protection filters?

Filters are used to automatically stop fraudulent purchases and approve genuine ones. Transactions are evaluated against filters and get declined if any of the filter conditions are satisfied. A set of customised filters are provided to you out-of-the-box and are tailored for your business by considering various attributes, such as business category, the average payment volume and past chargebacks. 

What filters do I get with Fraud Protection?

How do I enable/disable Fraud Protection filters?

  1. Click Filters.
  2. In the Enable column, click the toggle against the filter you want to enable or disable.
  3. Click Test to test the performance after updating the selected filter.
  4. Click Save if you want to keep the changes.

How do I edit Fraud Protection filters?

  1. Click Filters.
  2. Click Edit next to the filter you want to update.
  3. Enter values into the available boxes.
  4. Click Test to test the performance after updating the selected filter.
  5. Click Save if you want to keep the changes.

What are filter recommendations and how do I apply them?

Behind the scenes, Fraud Protection constantly learns from payments across the PayPal network and provides recommendations to filters aiming to maximise your revenue. The initial set of recommendations will take at least 45 days after you’re onboarded to appear.   

  1. In the Recommendations panel, click View.
  2. Select the checkboxes for the filters you wish to update.
  3. Click Apply.
  4. Click Test to view your simulated approvals/rejections.
  5. Click Save to update your filters for future payments.

When reviewing the recommendations and selecting the checkboxes, you can click the drop-down arrow to view the Performance Forecast. This gives you an idea of how it will improve your fraud decision performance. 

You can also click Recommended Filter Update next to each individual filter if you want to review each one separately. 

How does the filter testing feature work?

Your historical transactions are used to test filters based on the time period you select in the Time Filter. This is available on the Filters page in the upper right-hand corner. 
The filter testing feature helps to simulate filter changes over your past transactions. This doesn’t guarantee the future performance of your transactions. However, because these changes apply to live transactions within five minutes of saving, you must test any changes before saving.   

Can I add my own filters?

The filter set provided is based on your business metrics. They’re best suited to your transactions and we don’t provide the option to create new filters, as that might lead to more declines.   

What if I have a genuine transaction declined by Fraud Protection?

You are unable to approve a transaction that has already been declined. If you think that a similar transaction could be rejected by Fraud Protection, you may change the filter settings or even switch off the filter that you believe resulted in the rejection of that transaction. Remember to switch the filter back on once the transaction is complete.  

What happens if I receive a dispute or chargeback that was approved by Fraud Protection?

Fraud Protection serves as an added layer of security to decline transactions that can result in potential chargebacks. If you receive a chargeback on an approved transaction, it will fall under your PayPal Terms and Conditions. PayPal is not liable for any chargebacks even after Fraud Protection is enabled. 

How do I disable Fraud Protection if I no longer want to use it?

  1. Click the Gear icon within Fraud Protection.
  2. Click Disable Fraud Protection.
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