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Overview
Founded in 2011 and headquartered in London, England, Web Shield is known as a leader in on-boarding, underwriting, and provider for monitoring solutions.
The current payment infrastructure is permeated with assaults from fraudulent activities. The biggest defenders from this ongoing risk are the payment service providers and the acquiring banks. They ultimately hold the power, (via their risk, compliance, and underwriting departments) to determine which merchants get their card accepted. However, if they ever become careless and neglect this critical function, they leave themselves defenseless against hefty fees from regulators and credit card associations.
To resolve this, Web Shield has perfected the monitoring of merchants and on-boarding processes as effective as necessary.
The InvestiGate On-Boarding Solution binds together multiple “investigative modules” in one platform for maximum convenience, facilitating teams to work faster and more effectively. From the moment a merchant’s information is entered, its research engine ticks all the vital red flags. Advanced “mirroring techniques” guarantee that results will be available in less than seven minutes.
InvestiGate’s core modules go above and beyond “keyword flagging”. They offer the following:
– Portfolio Cross-Check: uncovers previously unknown relationships between entities.
– Virtual Address Detection: shows if a merchant has a physical presence at the indicated address.
– Underwriting Checklist: offers tips for performing underwriting efficiently.
– Business Classification: allows integration of business-related guidance into your underwriting.
– Website Auto-Compliance: rates the merchant’s website for compliance with current best practices.
– Audit Trail: automatically documents the process of underwriting.
– SiteAlert: alerts you about any hit on their crowdsourced warning list.
– License Verification: compares the merchant’s name against associated whitelists.
InvestiGate also offers optional modules. This allows underwriters to accommodate investigations based on their company’s requirements:
– Transaction Laundering Detection: reveals merchant websites possibly used for transaction laundering.
– Historical Website Data: allows you to review historical data.
– Document Service: independently validates corporate documents and ownership information.
– Credit Risk Exposure Manager: computes the default risk and recommends collaterals.
– Merchant Location Determination: finds the merchant’s principal place of business and verifies if it matches your licensing area.
– Web Shield Case Service: gets false positives cleared or a completely serviced case file.
– Member Area Crawling: monitors restricted member areas for content infractions.
Third-parties have also been made available within InvestiGate. It boasts a growing number of credit bureaus, sanction list providers, and identity verification services. As soon as the merchant is on-boarded, PULSE, a modular monitoring solution, kicks in and provides different options:
– Content Violations: Locate content violations based on credit card association rules.
– Website Compliance: Keep abreast of modifications on an entity’s website such as the name, address or website status.
– MCC Detect: Automatically determine a website’s Merchant Category Code.
– Reputation Scan: Investigate the latest customer complaints, criminal charges, fraud warnings and negative news.
– Transaction Laundering: Determine unknown websites in need of registration or prone to transaction laundering.
– Deceptive Traffic Detection: Monitor website traffic for deceitful marketing practices.
The unique point of difference for Web Shield is that their solutions are unsurpassed in both their speed and precision. In addition, their modular design of their top-of-the-line SaaS solutions can be configured to the company’s particular “risk appetite” and compliance guidelines.
Within their monitoring practices, their features include portfolio cross-check, virtual address detection, website auto compliance, and site alert.
For their KYC Compliance, they offer money laundering detection, Compliance sanctions & PEP screening, Deceptive traffic detection, and Predictive risk analysis.
Some of their clients include: Wirecard, Paysafe, Payvision, Concardis (for onboarding and monitoring).
As far as other services, they offer additional training for underwriters and cryptocurrency compliance resources for merchants and acquirers.
They specifically encourage the growth of the community of risk professionals via their training programs in Web Shield Academy and the RiskConnect Conference.
Web Shield is very much involved in the payment industry ecosystem and stays on top of current developments in the regulation technology field. Some of its associations include Merchant Acquirers’ Committee, Electronic Transactions Association, European Financial Coalition, International RegTech Association, Vendorcom, Internet Watch Foundation, and European Payments Service Providers for Merchants.
Christian Chmiel, CEO of Web Shield, authored the book, “Fundamentals of Card-not-Present Merchant Acceptance”, as a “best practice guide for underwriters’. The book delves into risk indicators that underwriters must keep in mind and include within their investigation. It offers valuable online resources, analytical tools, and covers topics such as “illegal aggregation.”
On September 17th, 2018, 4Stop, a global provider of KYC, fraud prevention, and compliance announced its partnership with Web Shield to launch its “global merchant underwriting solution.” Their mission was to combine forces and help businesses control their risk model and onboard their merchants with confidence.