Fiserv System Said to Use Incentives to Deter Customer Returns

Fiserv will showcase its Carat omnichannel commerce ecosystem at NRF 2022 this weekend in New York, as a way to mitigate customer returns, it emailed Thursday. By using payments data to identify consumers with a high propensity to return items, retailers can incentivize “high returners” in real time to not send items back, the company said. With the Fiserv systems, merchants can identify credit or debit cards at the point of sale that have historical payment activity matching an anonymous profile of high return activity, it said. When those cards are presented online or in store, the merchant can present the customer with a discount or digital gift card in real time before the purchase is made, if the consumer agrees to make the sale final, with no option to return. If a consumer planning to price shop between two websites for the same pair of shoes is provided an incentive, “the chance of unnecessary items being purchased or returned is mitigated,” it said. For some merchants, as much as 60% of their return volume comes from just 1% of their consumer base, it said.