OmniPayments’ Preauthorization Engine – Our Customers Call It the Fraud Blocker

OmniPayments' Preauthorization Engine - Our Customers Call It the Fraud Blocker!

Transparent to those of us who use credit cards and debit cards, numerous validation checks take place on transactions before the card-issuing banks issue final authorizations.  Not only must cards be active and transactions not exceed card limits or account balances, but other restrictions also may apply based on intricate, bank-individualized sets of rules. Only if a transaction complies with the rules is it forwarded to the issuing bank for approval or rejection.

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“Preauthorization” checks have grown popular in light of today’s alarming increase in fraudulent activities.  Such checks successfully detect and prevent fraudulent transactions. They often are performed by a separate system acting as a front end to an issuing bank. In many cases, the front end is a financial-transaction switch, which routes transactions to banks from sources such as POS devices, ATMs, smart phones, and the Internet.

The OmniPayments Preauthorization Engine is used by financial institutions in conjunction with the OmniPayments Financial Transaction Switch or as a seamless interface to other providers’ switches via a custom support module (CSM). Our customers’ call our Engine the fraud blocker. Modern and easy to manage, it preauthorizes millions of transactions far more effectively than its complex, compute-intensive competitors.

Each issuing bank’s preauthorization parameters initially can be set up via bulk file transfer, maintained via an OmniPayments-provided browser interface, and accumulated in an Operational Data Store (ODS) for use by the OmniPayments Preauthorization Engine. Rules change and require continual maintenance.  OmniPayments offloads from the banks this time-consuming responsibility via its Transaction Screening Module.  The OmniPayments Financial Transaction Switch or that of another provider will route all transactions to the Preauthorization Engine for review.  Only then will validated transactions be submitted to issuing banks.