6 Steps to Reduce Fraud with a Payment Orchestration Platform

Smarter fraud prevention for your e-commerce global payments strategy.
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Running a global e-commerce business opens the door to new markets, customers, and growth opportunities, but it also exposes your operation to a wider range of fraud risks. Today’s fraudsters are more organized, tech-savvy, and fast-moving than ever before. To stay ahead, e-commerce businesses must be proactive, implementing smarter strategies to detect threats, protect customers, and secure the checkout experience.

In fact, losses from online payment fraud have grown at an alarming rate, projected to reach $48 billion in 2023, up from $17.5 billion just three years prior. And while the numbers are concerning, the greater challenge lies in how much more sophisticated and harder to detect these threats have become.

By centralizing fraud prevention efforts across multiple providers, channels, and markets, businesses operating in ecommerce global payments can reduce fraud rates, optimize approval rates, and improve the overall customer experience.

Here’s how to do it in 6 essential steps:

1. Map Your Payment and Risk Ecosystem

Start by identifying the tools, platforms, and processes currently in place across your payment and fraud stack. This includes payment gateways, fraud detection tools, chargeback management systems, and more.

🛠 Tip: Visualize the full payment journey and flag where fraud checks happen, and where gaps exist.

A modern payment orchestration platform helps you unify these systems into a streamlined flow.

2. Define Fraud Risk Tolerance and KPIs

Fraud prevention needs to align with your business goals. Define your risk appetite: What level of fraud is acceptable? How much friction can your customers tolerate?

🎯 Focus areas: Approval rates, false positives, chargeback ratios, and customer experience.

These insights will guide how your orchestrated fraud prevention flows should operate within the orchestration layer.

3. Select and Connect the Right Fraud Tools

To reduce fraud effectively, orchestration requires flexibility. Choose the right mix of tools that can plug into your payment orchestration platform, including:

  • Device and browser fingerprinting

  • Behavioral biometrics

  • Velocity rules and AI-based scoring

  • Identity verification systems

🔌 Look for tools that support API-based integration, real-time risk decisions, and multi-market coverage.

4. Reinforce with Smart Security Layers (3DS 2.3.1)

Modern security protocols like 3D Secure (3DS 2.3.1) play a critical role in reducing fraud while preserving the customer experience. The protocol improves on the limitations of its predecessors, specifically in reducing cart abandonment and customer friction, and improving payment performance.

🔐 Why it's essential: 3DS 2.3.1 supports Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) requirements under PSD2 and helps merchants reduce fraud liability while keeping checkout smooth.

✨ Use your payment orchestration platform to dynamically trigger 3DS 2.3.1 when needed, based on risk profiles or market requirements, so you're secure, compliant, and customer-friendly.

5. Automate and Orchestrate Decision Flows

Use your orchestration layer to build decisioning logic that adapts to real-time risk signals. For example:

  • Low risk → Approve instantly

  • Medium risk → Trigger 2FA or step-up checks

  • High risk → Block or send to manual review

🧪 Continuously test and refine your flows based on approval rates, conversion impact, and fraud outcomes.

6. Monitor Performance and Adapt Fast

Fraud prevention isn’t static. You need to regularly review system performance, identify new threats, and update your logic accordingly.

📈 Use your payment orchestration platform to quickly make changes, without relying on long dev cycles or manual processes.

🔁 Stay agile: Feed fraud outcomes and chargeback data back into your system to fine-tune models and rules.

Reducing fraud in today’s global ecommerce landscape takes more than just good tools; it takes orchestration. By unifying your payment stack and fraud prevention systems through a payment orchestration platform, you’ll gain the visibility and control needed to act fast and stay secure.

From e-commerce global payments to high-risk markets, an orchestrated approach helps you block fraud, reduce friction, and drive growth without compromise.

👉 Want to explore how UpGate helps businesses implement orchestrated fraud prevention? Let’s talk.