What's Liability Shift?

A look into 3DS authentications and how they help.

On the main Transactions page, and in the transaction details page, you may notice a section marked Liability Shift, with either a red cross, or a green check in front of it.

The automated risk engine triggers 3DS authentications based on a complex set of rules. This helps reduce the number of fraudulent transactions, while keeping the friction caused to genuine users at a minimum.

When a 3DS authentication is successfully completed, that transaction will have the liability shift green check linked to it. What that green check means is that if that transaction is raised as a chargeback, the liability for the associated fees and charges will fall on the card issuer, and not you.

Please keep in mind however, that there are some exceptions to this rule. For example, successful 3DS authentication on a Visa Google Pay transaction will still not lead to a positive liability shift. Chargebacks raised on positive liability shift transactions can still be your liability for certain categories, for example if the user claims that they did authenticate the transaction, but the services they paid for were not provided. In our experience, these exceptions are exceedingly rare.

If the liability shift is shown as a red cross, that means the transaction was either not 3DS authenticated, or that positive liability shift could not be established due to an exception similar to above.