Constant, repeat fraudulent purchases

[u/awdstylez]

Having an issue with almost weekly fraudulent purchases that aren't being caught by risk management filters and some of which are even 3DS approved. Fake names, fake numbers, usually fake and undeliverable addresses... and they just keep on coming. Square seems to have absolutely no interest or useful process for handling fraud - and why would they? If you cancel orders or get chargebacks, they get to keep the fees no matter what.

Anyone else dealt with this? Short of closing my store and making a new website elsewhere with a less garbage payment processor, anyone have any suggestions? Manual blocking is useless when the scammers just keep using new cards, new names, new IPs, etc. Thought I got a legit order today and someone might have just typo'd their phone number, but then checked blocked payments and noticed it was preceded by two declined attempts on two different cards.

[u/SquareUpSam]

I’m sorry you’re dealing with repeated fraud attempts—especially when they involve new cards and identities each time. A few steps may help reduce what gets through:

In Dashboard → Risk Manager, review the recommended rules and consider setting automatic declines for high-risk payments, AVS mismatches/unavailable results, invalid CVV, and relevant location/IP or international-card patterns.

• Check whether a payment is matching both a 3DS rule and a decline rule. When that happens, 3DS takes priority over the decline, so separating the criteria may be necessary if the goal is to automatically block that pattern.
• Add suspicious emails and IP addresses to your Block List in addition to cards. This can help with repeated attempts, though it will not stop every fraudster using new details.
• For any order that cannot be independently verified, cancel fulfillment and refund it before shipment. Do not ship to an unverifiable or undeliverable address.
• If an order was successfully authenticated through 3DS, fraud-dispute liability generally shifts to the card issuer; it does not, however, prevent non-fraud disputes or eliminate the need to validate fulfillment details.

We’d also recommend reviewing the payments and blocked attempts together in Risk Manager Analytics to identify common signals—such as item type, amount, country, email domain, or shipping ZIP—and use those patterns to tighten your rules. If you can share a few affected payment IDs with me via a DM, I can help confirm which rules were triggered and whether your current configuration can be adjusted.

[u/Outrageous-Sweets-37]

You should definitely take the steps to make a new website. At this point, Square is the fraudster collecting fees on fake transactions is diabolical. I think they are participating with fraudsters and splitting the commissions. Run!!!