We launched our Fraud prevention app for Shopify stores a few months ago. So far, the reception has been great and we have been able to save merchants a lot money.   Checkout our reviews or write one! Last week, Shopify released a free native fraud prevention app, Fraud Filter. We took Fraud Filter for a test drive over the weekend. Here are our thoughts on the new app and how it compares with our own.

Fraud Filter- Beautiful and Clean Designs

Our impression was that the Fraud Filter app exemplifies everything that is great about Shopify. Beautiful, clean and user friendly designs. Having it as a native app without having to leave the admin area makes the process feel more seamless. Fraud Filter allows merchants to automatically make decisions without having to review each individual order closely. For example, Fraud Filter allows merchants to flag or cancel orders based on AVS responses or based on shipping country, something that Shopify merchants will find very useful.

Good For Certain Situations

Overall, Fraud Filter is a huge improvement over the built-in risk assessment tools, however, it appears to be somewhat reactionary instead of predictive or proactive. For example, Fraud Filter can help you block repeat offenders in certain circumstances, flag orders based on AVS or block transactions based on shipping country.  But all these will only address less sophisticated forms of fraud.  For many Shopify merchants, this may be enough. Unfortunately, this will not help you screen orders where AVS is not available.  

Differences between Subuno's Fraud Prevention App and Fraud Filter

Here is a summary of what we found:

Type of Check	Subuno	Shopify
Auto-Cancel	x	x
AVS Mismatch	x	x
Shipping Country	x	x
Blacklists - order data (e.g. IP, email, phone, address...etc)	x	x
High Order Value	x	x
Velocity Checks	x
Integration with 3rd party fraud prevention/ order validation/blacklisting tools	x
IP Country Blocks	x
Fraud Score	x
Manual Review Tools	x
Filters Workflow Customization/Prioritization	x

What does this mean for merchants?

1. Should you use Shopify’s Fraud Filter App?
Absolutely. Especially since it's free! We believe that the more tools that merchants have at their disposal, the better chance they have to protect against fraud.

2. What if you are currently using Subuno's Fraud Prevention App?
We suggest you take the Fraud Filter app for a spin as well.  You will quickly see whether it fits your needs.  If the the fraudulent scenarios you see  can be detected by basic filters like AVS or Shipping country, then this app will provide a lot of value.

On the other hand, if you are facing more sophisticated fraudsters who also adapt instead of just going after the low hanging fruits, Subuno Fraud Prevention app is better suited to give you the power to create customized flow and fraud prevention strategy.  In addition, Subuno's app will provide additional values to you if you require something more advanced, such as tapping into additional industry leading 3rd party tools to provide some predictability as well as a way to validate orders that have been flagged for review. 

Ultimately, it really depends on the kind of fraud you are seeing and how you are planning for your fraud prevention strategy to evolve with your store.