Case Study

A Leading PropTech Saves $1.25M in Chargeback Fraud

Client

A leading PropTech company

Challenges

Fake chargebacks on rent payments via credit card

Solution

Bureau’s alternate data with custom risk models and decisioning

Demonstrated Results

$1.25M in chargeback fraud prevented in three months
False chargeback rates dropped from 40% to 8%
1,200+ high-risk transactions stopped pre-payment
60,000+ users flagged as high-risk for chargeback fraud
Credit card rent payments restricted for risky users

Introduction

Real-time risk scoring powered by Bureau’s Alternate Data helped stop 1,200+ high-risk transactions before payment, cut false chargebacks by 80%, and restored trust in credit card rent flows

The Challenge

Exposing the Hidden Abuse

A prominent proptech platform was losing substantial amounts of its revenue due to chargeback fraud. While trying to provide convenience of using credit card payments for rent transactions, it also created an opportunity for chargeback fraud.

Furthermore, while the platform struggled with rising fraud, competitors capitalized on the situation by offering lower fees and attractive perks like cashback, drawing users away. To remain competitive and retain its customer base, the platform needed to strengthen fraud prevention without compromising the smooth user experience that drove adoption. However, its existing fraud detection systems had critical gaps.

Absence of proactive fraud controls meant abuse could occur and escalate before any preventative measures were triggered, resulting in:

20% of credit card rent payments were resulting in chargebacks
High-value, high-frequency transactions meant that even a small percentage of fraud would cause significant monthly losses.
Fraud led to revenue loss, damaged landlord trust, and increased operational burden from legal and customer service follow-ups.

Fragmented, post-transaction detection, allowing fraud to go undetected until after damage was done
Lack of model explainability, making it hard to improve or trust the system.

The Solution

Real-Time Fraud Detection

The platform partnered with Bureau to stop chargeback fraud before it could happen. Bureau leveraged its Alternate Data solution to build a real-time, explainable scoring system that helped the platform stop bad actors before transactions, without disrupting legitimate users.

Bureau’s fraud engine evaluated user trustworthiness and each transaction in real time using a rule-based scoring model, built on 200+ live signals. These signals included telco metadata, UPI integrity, email quality, identity consistency, transaction attributes, and digital footprint.

Rather than using black-box machine learning, each signal was treated as a weighted rule. Based on the available trust markers, the system elevated or reduced risk levels, producing an overall score indicative of possible chargeback fraud.

To simplify downstream actioning, users were segmented into risk bands based on their composite profile:

Low Risk: Allowed to proceed with no additional checks
Moderate Risk: Passed with soft friction or flagged for monitoring
High Risk: Restricted from sensitive flows like credit card payments

This approach ensured:

Precision in identifying risky users without over-blocking
Explainability for business and ops teams to understand every decision
Adaptability to evolving fraud patterns without retraining
Speed with sub-150ms scoring latency

The Bureau Impact

Real-time Action, Real-world Impact

Bureau’s scoring engine is built for accuracy and real-world volatility. It handles high-load periods and signal outages autonomously, maintaining stable fraud performance without delays, retraining, or manual intervention. With inline decisioning at the point of payment, it can block high-risk users before money moves. Granular precision allows blocking only high-risk cohorts, whereas clean users pass instantly.

Auto-reweights scoring and proactive risk-scoring, helped the platform block fraud in real-time, save millions of dollars, reduce disputes, and restore trust across the payment flow. Tangible results included:

$1.25M in chargeback fraud prevented in three months
False chargeback rates dropped from 40% to 8%
1,200+ high-risk transactions stopped pre-payment
60,000+ users flagged as high-risk for chargeback fraud
Credit card rent payments restricted for risky users

The Bureau Advantage

Powering unified decisioning with real-time intelligence, Bureau detects and stops fraudulent activities before they can escalate. This ensures end-to-end protection across customers’ digital journeys without compromising user experience. The core capabilities of Bureau’s unified risk decisioning platform include:

Alternate Data: Enables instant fraud checks using alternate signals - like digital footprint, email intelligence, and phone intelligence
Device Intelligence: Identifies trusted devices with real-time risk analysis against 160+ signals like rooted devices, emulator usage, and spoofed environments.
Behavioral Biometrics: Profiles user behavior to instantly flag anomalies bots, impersonation, session hijacking, and more.
Graph Identity Network: Maps interconnected users, devices, and IPs to unearth fraud rings and collusion at scale
Identity Verification: Performs seamless identity and liveness checks for onboarding
Contextual Decisioning: Dynamically adapts authentication and access based on contextual risk levels.

Bureau’s unified risk decisioning platform helps marketplaces expand to new geographical locations with confidence while ensuring local, regional, and global compliance

Schedule a Demo

Conclusion

Using sophisticated tools and techniques, fraud rings continued to operate undetected. Bureau’s solution, combining device intelligence, graph-based analysis, behavioral biometrics, and alternate data, powered a response that successfully thwarted collusive activities of the fraud ring. Now, the company exercises greater control over its digital platforms to maintain customer trust and sustained revenue.

About Bureau

Bureau is a unified risk decisioning platform for digital user journeys that helps digital businesses verify users, detect fraud, and secure trust in real time. Trusted by 200+ global companies across financial institutions, fintechs, digital marketplaces, and consumer internet companies, Bureau powers safer, smarter digital ecosystems across the world.

The Challenge

Exposing the Hidden Abuse

Absence of proactive fraud controls meant abuse could occur and escalate before any preventative measures were triggered, resulting in:

20% of credit card rent payments were resulting in chargebacks
High-value, high-frequency transactions meant that even a small percentage of fraud would cause significant monthly losses.
Fraud led to revenue loss, damaged landlord trust, and increased operational burden from legal and customer service follow-ups.

Fragmented, post-transaction detection, allowing fraud to go undetected until after damage was done
Lack of model explainability, making it hard to improve or trust the system.

The Challenge

Exposing the Hidden Abuse

Absence of proactive fraud controls meant abuse could occur and escalate before any preventative measures were triggered, resulting in:

20% of credit card rent payments were resulting in chargebacks
High-value, high-frequency transactions meant that even a small percentage of fraud would cause significant monthly losses.
Fraud led to revenue loss, damaged landlord trust, and increased operational burden from legal and customer service follow-ups.

Fragmented, post-transaction detection, allowing fraud to go undetected until after damage was done
Lack of model explainability, making it hard to improve or trust the system.

The Solution

Real-Time Fraud Detection

To simplify downstream actioning, users were segmented into risk bands based on their composite profile:

Low Risk: Allowed to proceed with no additional checks
Moderate Risk: Passed with soft friction or flagged for monitoring
High Risk: Restricted from sensitive flows like credit card payments

This approach ensured:

Precision in identifying risky users without over-blocking
Explainability for business and ops teams to understand every decision
Adaptability to evolving fraud patterns without retraining
Speed with sub-150ms scoring latency

The Solution

Real-Time Fraud Detection

To simplify downstream actioning, users were segmented into risk bands based on their composite profile:

Low Risk: Allowed to proceed with no additional checks
Moderate Risk: Passed with soft friction or flagged for monitoring
High Risk: Restricted from sensitive flows like credit card payments

This approach ensured:

Precision in identifying risky users without over-blocking
Explainability for business and ops teams to understand every decision
Adaptability to evolving fraud patterns without retraining
Speed with sub-150ms scoring latency

The Bureau Impact

Real-time Action, Real-world Impact

$1.25M in chargeback fraud prevented in three months
False chargeback rates dropped from 40% to 8%
1,200+ high-risk transactions stopped pre-payment
60,000+ users flagged as high-risk for chargeback fraud
Credit card rent payments restricted for risky users

The Bureau Impact

Real-time Action, Real-world Impact

$1.25M in chargeback fraud prevented in three months
False chargeback rates dropped from 40% to 8%
1,200+ high-risk transactions stopped pre-payment
60,000+ users flagged as high-risk for chargeback fraud
Credit card rent payments restricted for risky users

The Bureau Advantage

Alternate Data: Enables instant fraud checks using alternate signals - like digital footprint, email intelligence, and phone intelligence
Device Intelligence: Identifies trusted devices with real-time risk analysis against 160+ signals like rooted devices, emulator usage, and spoofed environments.
Behavioral Biometrics: Profiles user behavior to instantly flag anomalies bots, impersonation, session hijacking, and more.
Graph Identity Network: Maps interconnected users, devices, and IPs to unearth fraud rings and collusion at scale
Identity Verification: Performs seamless identity and liveness checks for onboarding
Contextual Decisioning: Dynamically adapts authentication and access based on contextual risk levels.

The Bureau Advantage

Alternate Data: Enables instant fraud checks using alternate signals - like digital footprint, email intelligence, and phone intelligence
Device Intelligence: Identifies trusted devices with real-time risk analysis against 160+ signals like rooted devices, emulator usage, and spoofed environments.
Behavioral Biometrics: Profiles user behavior to instantly flag anomalies bots, impersonation, session hijacking, and more.
Graph Identity Network: Maps interconnected users, devices, and IPs to unearth fraud rings and collusion at scale
Identity Verification: Performs seamless identity and liveness checks for onboarding
Contextual Decisioning: Dynamically adapts authentication and access based on contextual risk levels.

Bureau’s unified risk decisioning platform helps marketplaces expand to new geographical locations with confidence while ensuring local, regional, and global compliance

Schedule a Demo

Bureau’s unified risk decisioning platform helps marketplaces expand to new geographical locations with confidence while ensuring local, regional, and global compliance

Schedule a Demo

Bureau’s unified risk decisioning platform helps marketplaces expand to new geographical locations with confidence while ensuring local, regional, and global compliance

Schedule a Demo

Bureau’s unified risk decisioning platform helps marketplaces expand to new geographical locations with confidence while ensuring local, regional, and global compliance