The Golden Quarter is that time of year every merchant looks forward to, and that of 2021 broke sales records yet again. But alongside the padding of bottom lines, this quarter is linked to heightened fraud and customer experience challenges, the repercussions of which often echo well into the new year.

A wave of chargebacks and, consequently, an increased number of friendly fraud cases to dispute; a flood of returns, up to 10% of them being fraudulent claims; the fallout of a spike in account takeover attempts during October-December; and the impact of PSD2, to which merchants and shoppers still struggle to adjust.

The off-season is not all flies and no honey, though. To learn more about the opportunities offered by the Q1 downtime, download our guide, Building Off the Off-Season, which touches upon:

  • How the fraud profile of the holiday season impacts your Q1 chargebacks and potential disputes, and what you can do to lessen the workload
  • What are the fraud behaviors we are seeing in new and old store accounts, and how they measure up against the opportunity offered by encouraging account creation
  • How to decentivize the return and refund abuse you can expect post-holidays while conserving loyal customers
  • What merchants can do to lessen the impact of PSD2 on authentication and abandonment rates in the upcoming months