ZignSec, through its subsidiary Web Shield, has signed a partnership agreement with Ethoca. This partnership enables Web Shield to offer its ready-made chargeback management platform to acquiring banks and makes the company an official Mastercard Collaboration Service Provider. In terms of the potential financial impact to ZignSec it is too early to be precise, but the potential volume is multiple times ZignSec's revenue today.

The fact that ZignSec as a group is well positioned to capture part of this market share, means it has the potential to be a meaningful part of ZignSec's revenue during 2023. This development comes before major changes to the Mastercard dispute resolution process that will be introduced shortly. The new rules require acquiring banks to receive collaboration requests exclusively through Mastercom or Ethoca.

This necessitates re-building and updating internal processes and software. Web Shield's chargeback management platform offers a simple and free-to-use solution to this challenge by connecting acquirers and their merchants directly to Mastercom and Ethoca data, without any development work. Acquirers can use the white-labelled SaaS platform as a standalone solution or link it directly to their system for further automation, like automatic refunds.

With this step, ZignSec is set to solidify its presence in the growing acquiring market. Europe's top 45 acquiring banks alone handled 29.75 billion web-based transactions in 2021, up 33%, according to a Nielson Report. Chargebacks are growing alongside transaction numbers.

A report by Ethoca and PYMNTS found that eCommerce merchants overall reported an average 7.5% increase in chargebacks compared to 2019. What's more, for 17% of merchants, chargebacks increased by more than 25%, and about 9% saw their volume increase by more than 50%. There is an imminent need for solutions that streamline the dispute resolution process, both for merchants and their acquiring banks.