In the standard order processing flow of SAP Commerce Cloud, fraud check and payment act as critical gatekeepers. Their primary purpose is to safeguard the merchant’s business by validating the legitimacy and financial viability of every transaction before the fulfillment process begins. By placing these checks early in the lifecycle, the system ensures that company resources—such as warehouse labor and inventory—aren’t wasted on illegitimate or high-risk orders.
When a customer submits an order, it enters the business process engine, which orchestrates various automated steps. The fraud check and payment stages are strategically positioned to minimize financial risk, such as chargebacks and credit card fraud. Furthermore, these integrations help maintain a high level of customer trust and security by ensuring that payment data is handled according to industry standards and regulations, while providing a seamless experience for legitimate shoppers through automated approvals.
Fraud Check
Fraud check is a comprehensive security mechanism designed to identify and prevent fraudulent orders from being placed before they complete the purchasing process. This capability is essential for protecting e-commerce businesses from financial losses, chargebacks, and reputational damage caused by fraudulent transactions.
SAP Commerce Cloud provides a standard fraud check implementation for performing fraud checks internally, and also offers a common interface to integrate any external fraud check providers.
As shown in this diagram, the fraud check process will first analyze various risk indicators (or symptoms). Each symptom, such as a first-time order (FirstTimeOrderSymptom), a mismatch between shipping and billing addresses (DifferentAddressesSymptom), or an order exceeding a value threshold (OrderThresholdSymptom), is assigned a specific number of points (or scores) based on its importance. The system then sums up these points, together with any points provided by external providers, to produce a final result, which dictates a specific branch in the order process:
- Success: The order is suitable for payment and fulfillment.
- Manual Check: The order is flagged in Backoffice, where a customer support agent must manually investigate and then either accept or reject the order.
- Immediate Rejection: High-risk orders are automatically rejected, and the stock is returned to inventory.
Furthermore, corresponding fraud reports in the SAP Commerce Cloud Administration Cockpit offer administrators comprehensive tools to view and manage potentially fraudulent customer orders. This functionality is part of the wider fraud check that helps protect e-commerce businesses from financial losses due to fraudulent transactions.
Payment Integration
Payment handling in SAP Commerce Cloud is designed to be secure and compliant, typically involving a two-step communication process with a Payment Service Provider (PSP):
- Authorization: This step occurs during the checkout phase. The system requests the PSP to verify the payment credentials and reserve the funds in the customer's account. This guarantees the merchant will receive the money, provided the transaction is completed within a specific timeframe.
- Capture: This step is triggered later in the flow, usually once the order has been picked, packed, and marked as "shipped." The capture request instructs the PSP to finalize the transaction and transfer the authorized funds to the merchant’s account.
Note
Open Payment Framework (OPF) is the recommended payment integration solution for SAP Commerce Cloud. As an included SaaS framework, it allows you to connect with digital payment providers while significantly reducing the need for custom coding.
Summary
- Fraud checks and payment integrations protect merchants from financial loss by validating transactions before fulfillment starts.
- The fraud check system uses a scoring mechanism to automatically approve, flag for review, or reject orders based on risk levels.
Payments are handled in two distinct phases—authorization (securing funds) and capture (transferring funds)—to align with the physical movement of goods.
- The Open Payment Framework (OPF) is the recommended solution to integrate with Payment Service Providers.