Arcus FI is an eCommerce fraud prevention solution founded in 2013 coming out of a Y-Combinator. It allows issuers to target account updates using a direct two-way connection with merchants. It currently provides services to more than 30 merchants and 70 banks, FinTechs, and LendTechs across both the United States and Latin America use its API.

We sat down with Edrizio De La Cruz, Arcus’ CEO to asking him about the relationship between merchants and issuing banks.

1. Arcus is the first solution to provide a direct connection for merchants to receive & inquire data from issuing banks. Can you explain why this hasn’t been done in the past?

All core banking processors (ie, ACI, Fiserv) were built in the pre-internet era technology, which were not designed for mobile banking experiences or recurring online subscriptions. Others in the past have attempted to solve this problem but have focused on either the merchants or the issuers. Arcus solution is the first to create an ecosystem that has both sides of the equation of merchants and issuers.

2. Arcus offers a real time issuer-initiated card updater. Can you explain to merchants how card updates currently work, and how real-time communication will help protect them from fraudsters?

Current network tools only address approximately 47% of the cards that have been updated which are expired or damaged card. The main cause for a card being updated (53%) is if the card has been reported as lost / stolen. The new credit card that has been passed via the Arcus xChange system comes directly from the issuer and the issuer has verified the identity of the consumer.

3. Do you foresee any other opportunities for new fraud technologies to indirectly increase revenues?

Correct, the Arcus solution does reduce friction in the checkout process as the card on file with the merchant is always usable. This also leads to increased authorization rates for our merchants. Arcus sees in future iterations of our xChange the product the ability to pass additional consumer information including address as a means to reduce fraud. 

4. How do you expect fraudsters to attempt to adapt? Is there any new fraud trend you think they should be on the lookout for?

We feel that it will be extremely difficult to fraudsters to adapt to our systems as it would require them to enter into the issuers verification system.

5. What other types of collaboration would you like to see between the community of people working to prevent eCommerce fraud?

We would like to build a community where both our issuers and merchants can work closely with regards to passing real-time PII, shift in fraud liability, automated chargeback resolution, and issuer reason code reconciliation.

Arcus is improving the digital payments infrastructure. To date, it has received more than 13 million dollars in funding from investors including Capor Capital, Maverick Capital, and HOF Capital.