Concourse — Disputes is an EFT payment transaction dispute management solution that manages the disputes life cycle from initial report to final disposition. The Concourse — Disputes business service allows companies to do the following:

• Generate adjustments, chargebacks, representments, and other dispute related activities
• Manage dispute activity based on the entire transaction life cycle (authorization, clearing item, reversals, chargebacks, representments, arbitration, etc.).
• Configure dispute plans to automate the administration of network dispute rules
• Support unique dispute rules based on business relationships
• Integrate internal processing procedures as workflow steps within dispute plans
• Identify parties that must approve disputes prior to settlement
• Control the initiation of dispute activities based on the characteristics of each transaction
• Track important milestones to ensure government and network compliance is observed
• Monitor dispute activity in near real-time
• Issue notifications for current dispute activity and reminders for looming events
• Submit disputes for settlement
• Grant client access via a secure browser interface
• Leverage Data Access Tagging to distribute work to internal staff

Below is a more extensive overview of the specific features and corresponding benefits of Concourse — Disputes.

Concourse — Disputes allows companies to configure Dispute Plans to automate the administration of internal and external dispute rules. The rules for disputing a transaction vary significantly based on the transaction type, network involvement, conditions at the point-of-service, domestic versus international, and the reason for the dispute. As transactions are disputed, the Concourse — Disputes business service analyzes the entire transaction life cycle in order to assign a plan to manage all ongoing dispute activity. The plan manages the allowed dispute actions (retrieval request, chargeback, representment, adjustment, pre-arbitration, etc.), dispute action dependencies, day limit rules, amount limit rules, approval rules, disputable amounts, supported dispute reasons, important milestones, and processing steps that need to occur to ensure dispute activity occurs in a compliant manner.

As with the other Concourse products, system owners can use the user-friendly Expression Generator to configure the Concourse — Disputes product. As a result, user-defined business rules can be configured to invoke different processing based on the payment transaction being disputed. This allows a system owner to administer standard disputes processing for a majority of their payment transactions and business partnerships while supporting custom plans for other aspects of their business.

Concourse — Disputes allows companies to control both the types of disputes allowed on a particular payment transaction as well as the time period during which dispute initiation is allowed. This prevents data entry personnel from making costly mistakes that will need to be corrected later. For example, companies can set both the minimum and maximum time limits for initiation or receipt of a chargeback as well as time limits for a subsequent representment.

Concourse — Disputes allows each Dispute Plan to support a variety of workflows based on the payment transaction being disputed and its existing dispute activity. Branches in the workflow can be defined to allow the user workflow to change based on the occurrence or outcome of prior workflow steps. For example, if a retrieval request is created but a fulfillment is not received, then the workflow can branch to allow a chargeback to be created within x number of days of the prior action (retrieval request) with specified dispute reasons. However, if the fulfillment is received then the chargeback may be offered but with different dispute reasons. These are considered sequenced workflow steps within a Dispute Plan because they impose a sequence of events and have dependencies on each other.

Dispute Plans also support non-sequenced steps in a workflow to allow users to initiate them at anytime during the dispute management process. Non-sequenced steps provide support for user-completed actions like attaching documents, creating form letters, completing a network specific form, and other items that may not need to be managed in a sequential manner. These steps can be incorporated into a workflow sequence when needed.

Concourse — Disputes uses secure, browser-based technology that allows companies to provide their clients access to dispute management features. Using the Concourse security features, companies can control the level of access that will be provided to a client, including no access, search and view only, or initiate and approve disputes. With this capability, companies can delegate dispute entry to its clients or centralize the function at a specific site.

Concourse — Disputes supports configuration of notifications and reminders for dispute related activities. Emails are created by the system for delivery to internal and external contacts associated with the businesses involved in the disputed transaction. Notifications are used by the Concourse — Disputes system to alert individuals that a dispute related activity has occurred. This feature allows notifications to occur in near real-time or at a pre-configured time of day. Automated notifications allow clients to review their disputed transactions quickly and eliminate the need to wait until a report is delivered the following business day. Reminders are generated for time-sensitive events that are nearing the end of their availability window. These allow the users to be notified that an action needs to be taken soon or a workflow step will expire.

Concourse — Disputes includes a robust online reporting capability that provides up-to-date information for all dispute management activities, including:

• Outstanding disputes
• Settled disputes
• Status of disputes
• Looming workflow steps
• Reminder and notifications

Concourse — Disputes’ online reporting facility allows internal and external users to download the contents of online summaries to their systems.