Ethoca Alerts
explained.

How Ethoca Alerts work

1. A cardholder reports fraud or disputes a purchase with a participating issuer.
2. The issuer shares the case through the Ethoca network.
3. The merchant receives an alert, either pushed in real time or pulled by polling, per Mastercard's developer documentation.
4. The merchant acts and reports an outcome back.

Mastercard's documentation lists two alert types:

• Confirmed fraud: the issuer confirmed the transaction was fraudulent. Outcomes include stopped, partially stopped, previously cancelled, missed and account suspended.
• Customer dispute: the cardholder is disputing the transaction. Outcomes include resolved, resolved previously refunded and unresolved dispute.

Refund statuses (refunded, not refunded, not settled) are reported too. The documentation recommends acting within 24 hours of receiving an alert to maximize the chance of stopping the chargeback.

Ethoca Consumer Clarity

A separate Mastercard product aimed at preventing confusion-driven disputes. Mastercard says Consumer Clarity shows recognizable merchant names, logos, digital receipts with itemized purchase details and merchant contact information inside banking apps, and shares the same details with issuers' call centers, so a cardholder who doesn't recognize a charge can see what it was before disputing. It pairs well with a clear merchant descriptor.

Why it matters

• Stop the loss before it ships. A confirmed-fraud alert on an unshipped order lets you cancel instead of losing the goods and paying a chargeback fee.
• Refund to prevent a chargeback. On customer-dispute alerts, a refund can resolve the case. Whether an alerted and refunded case avoids a chargeback, and how it is treated in network ratios, depends on timing and network rules, so confirm with your provider.

A worked example

At 10:00 a store receives a confirmed-fraud alert on a $420 order placed the night before. The order is still in the warehouse queue. The team cancels fulfillment, refunds the $420 and reports "stopped". Without the alert, the order would have shipped at noon and a fraud chargeback could have followed weeks later: $420 in goods plus the fee.

Common mistakes

• Slow handling. Alerts lose value by the hour; automate the easy cases.
• Refunding without stopping shipment, so you lose both the money and the goods.
• Refunding cases already charged back, paying twice.
• Not reporting outcomes, which the alert network relies on.

How Verdikx helps

Verdikx is a fraud, chargeback and dispute platform for e-commerce and SaaS merchants, made by Verdikx LLC. Mastercard Ethoca alerts in Verdikx are coming soon; they are not live yet. When they launch, they will join the Prevention inbox alongside Stripe early fraud warnings, which are live on Growth and Pro today with recommendations (Refund now, Hold fulfillment, Refunded elsewhere, Don't refund) and optional automatic refunds inside limits you set. Verdikx never cancels an order on its own. With order screening (Growth and up), it holds risky Shopify orders and orders from customers you block, and you decide whether to cancel. Autopilot never accepts a dispute. See order screening and prevention.