PayPal designed the Fraud Protection Services to enable you to implement the security of transaction in phases. You first set and fine-tune filter settings in a test environment. Then you move your test settings to live transaction environment.
If you are using Fraud Protection Services for the first time, this section walks you through the steps required to set up the service. For detailed information about the service, refer to About Fraud Protection Services.
After signing up for Fraud Protection Services (Basic or Advanced), perform the following tasks on PayPal Manager:
Phase 1 Run Test Transactions Against Filter Settings on Test Transaction Security Servers
Phase 2 Run Live Transactions on Live Transaction Servers in Observe Mode
Phase 3 Run All Transactions Through the Live Transaction Security Servers Using Active Mode
To protect you against credit card fraud, Fraud Protection Services use filters that identify potentially fraudulent activity and let you decide whether to accept or reject the suspicious transactions.
Configurable filters screen each transaction for evidence of potentially fraudulent activity. When a filter identifies a suspicious transaction, the transaction is marked for review.
In this phase of implementation, you configure filter settings for test servers that do not affect the normal flow of live transactions. You then run test transactions against the filters and review the results offline to determine whether the integration was successful. Continue modifying and testing filters as required.
To set filters, navigate to Service Settings -> Test Setup. Click Edit Standard Filters.
The Edit Standard Filters page appears. It will contain many more filters if your account supports advanced filters. To make decisions about how the filters work, see Fraud Protection Services Standard Filters.
For each filter, you:
Click the filter checkbox to enable it and click-to-clear the checkbox to disable it.
Specify the action that the filter should take when it is triggered.
For some filters, you set the trigger value (for example, for the Total Purchase Price Ceiling filter, the trigger value is the transaction amount that causes the filter to set a transaction aside).
Items that you enter in the Test Good, Bad, or Product Watch lists are not carried over to your configuration for the live servers, so do not spend time entering a complete list for the test configuration.
Once you complete editing the page, click Deploy. If you do not deploy the filters, then your settings are not saved.
All filters are now configured, and you can begin testing the settings by running test transactions.
Review the filter results by following the instructions on Assessing Transactions that Triggered Filters.
Based on your results, you may want to make changes to the filter settings. Simply return to the Edit Standard Filters page, change settings, and redeploy them. Once you are happy with your filter settings, you can move to Phase 2.
In this phase of the implementation, you configure filters on live servers to the settings that you had fine-tuned on the test servers. In Observe mode, filters examine each live transaction and mark the transaction with the filter results. The important difference between Observe and Active mode is that, regardless of the filter actions, all Observe mode transactions are submitted for processing in the normal fashion.
Observe mode enables you to view filter actions offline to assess their impact (given current settings) on your actual transaction stream.
You are charged the per-transaction fee to use the live servers in either Observe or Active mode.
Navigate to Service Settings -> Fraud Protection -> Test Setup. Click Edit Standard Filters. The Edit Standard Filters page appears. Click Deploy. Remember that in this phase, you are configuring the live servers.
Click Move Test Filter Settings to Live. On the page that appears, click Move Test Filter Settings to Live again.
The Move Test Filters to Live page prompts whether to deploy the filters in Observe mode or in Active mode. Click Deploy to Observe Mode.
Once you deploy the filters, all transactions are sent to the live servers for screening by the live filters. In Observe mode, each transaction is marked with the filter action that would have occurred (Review, Reject, or Accept) had you set the filters to Active mode.
This enables you to monitor (without disturbing the flow of transactions) how actual customer transactions would have been affected by active filters.
PayPal updates deployed filter setting changes hourly (roughly on the hour). This means that you might have to wait up to an hour for your changes to take effect. This waiting period only occurs when you move from one mode to the next.
Review the filter results by following the instructions in Assessing Transactions that Triggered Filters. The Filter Scorecard will be particularly helpful in isolating filter performance that you should monitor closely and in ensuring that a filter setting is not set so strictly so as to disrupt normal business.
Once you are happy with your filter settings, you can move to Phase 3.
Once you have configured all filters to optimum settings, you convert to Active mode. Filters on the live servers examine each live transaction and take the specified action.
Navigate to Service Settings -> Fraud Protection -> Test Setup. Click Edit Standard Filters . The Edit Standard Filters page appears. Click Deploy.
Click Move Test Filter Settings to Live. On the page that appears, click Move Test Filter Settings to Live again.
On the Move Test Filters to Live page, click Deploy to Active Mode.
At the top of the next hour, all live transactions will be inspected by the filters.
Use instructions in Assessing Transactions that Triggered Filters to detect and fight fraud.
Remember that you can make changes to fine-tune filter settings at any time. After changing a setting, you must re-deploy the filters so that changes take effect.