Challenge
Fraud can be common in the hospitality industry: high-priced bookings attract fraudulent actors using stolen card information, and strict refund policies often lead customers to dispute legitimate charges. What’s more, the international nature of travel means lots of cross-border transactions that are harder to verify. That was the case for Oasis Hotels, which suffered from significant payment and fraud challenges, threatening its ability to serve international guests.
The Cancun-based company was grappling with a 6% fraudulent dispute rate on transactions, well above industry standards. Fraud didn’t just cause significant revenue loss; it also required substantial administrative resources, as staff struggled to handle disputes and reconciliations manually. The problem was compounded by the fact that Oasis’s existing payment system offered limited visibility into fraud patterns.
International payments posed another challenge. “Our payment gateway from the bank had a very high decline rate, especially for international payments,” said Fernando Pereira Martín, director of digital media at Oasis. “Customers were constantly contacting us to make payments with alternative methods since it was impossible for them to do so through the payment gateway.”
Oasis wanted payment methods that its guests recognised and trusted, especially since many were making substantial advance purchases from countries across Europe, North America, and Asia. The existing system’s limited payment options meant some potential guests couldn’t book at all, while others abandoned their reservations due to a friction-filled checkout process.
The combination of these challenges – high fraud rates, limited fraud prevention tools, problematic international payment acceptance, a poor checkout experience, and the resulting strain on customer service – made it clear that Oasis needed more sophisticated payment and fraud prevention to support its growing business.
Solution
In 2023, Oasis Hotels chose Stripe as its payments partner based on Stripe’s reputation for reliability, advanced fraud prevention tools, and ease of integration. The company’s first priority was tackling its fraud challenges with Radar for Fraud Teams.
Radar for Fraud Teams combines Radar’s ML-powered fraud prevention technology with custom rules, an adjustable risk threshold, and advanced insights, which allowed Oasis to analyse its unique fraud patterns. Radar’s dashboard interface, along with fraud insights that make it easy to identify the root cause of fraud trends, meant both technical staff and others could determine what was driving such high dispute rates.
Oasis worked closely with Stripe’s team to develop custom fraud rules that addressed its specific vulnerabilities. Oasis identified that many fraudulent transactions showed a discrepancy between the name on a reservation and the name on the card used for payment. The team implemented a custom rule that automatically compared these names and applied 3D Secure authentication when they didn’t match, which adds an additional layer of verification before a payment is processed.
Oasis also relied on Radar’s risk scores, which represent the level of fraud risk associated with a transaction – the higher the score, the greater the risk. Using the custom rules capabilities in Radar for Fraud Teams – which allow users to single out variables such as the number of previous disputes associated with a specific card number or IP address – Oasis was able to implement rules that used 3DS to automatically block cardholders who had a tendency to dispute past transactions.
With its fraud prevention foundation strengthened, Oasis turned to modernising its overall payment experience using Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite. Pereira and his team adopted Stripe Elements to create a native checkout experience on the company’s website, which eliminated the redirects that could lead to abandoned carts and missed sales. The embeddable UI components in Elements allowed Oasis to add Google Pay and Apple Pay to its payment mix. The company also implemented Link, which autofills a customer’s payment information for faster checkout.
Results
Radar for Fraud Teams leads to 90% reduction in dispute rates in 6 months
Thanks to custom rules and other optimisations in Radar for Fraud Teams, Oasis’s dispute rate plummeted 90%, from 6% to less than 1%, in just 6 months. Radar for Fraud Teams has “saved many hours each week for Oasis administrative staff. Dispute and refund management and reconciliation are done more efficiently now,” said Pereira.
Custom 3D Secure authentication rules in Radar for Fraud Teams drive significant fraud reduction
The insights provided by Radar for Fraud Teams allowed Oasis to create custom rules addressing the top drivers of fraud, enabling a significant reduction in fraud rates. “This was definitely a game-changer,” said Pereira. “By analysing patterns with our internal teams, we realised that many fraudulent transactions had this discrepancy between the name on the reservation and on the card. Implementing 3D Secure rules for these cases had a hugely positive impact on our dispute rates.”
Conversion improved through a streamlined checkout experience
Implementing Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite allowed Oasis to completely streamline its guests’ purchasing journey. The native checkout flow eliminated redirects, reduced cart abandonment, and created a more professional booking experience. The integration between Oasis’s e-commerce platform and its call centre has substantially reduced booking friction, allowing staff to focus on better customer service.
Fast, secure checkout with Link drives 33% of all Oasis bookings
Link now processes approximately one-third of all Oasis transaction volume. It does so while providing an additional layer of fraud protection through a built-in authentication process that verifies customer identity and payment details with a one-time code before completing transactions, helping prevent unauthorised bookings and reducing the risk of chargebacks.
Enhanced payment options drive international growth
The addition of Google Pay and Apple Pay has made it much easier for international customers to pay for their bookings. Given the importance of international customers to its business, Oasis plans to add more local payment methods in the coming years.
Integrating Stripe was intuitive and simple, and the changes we made have been very beneficial. We know because we can track our ROI quantitatively on the Stripe Dashboard.