09/04/2025 Is the test environment dangerous in modern anti-fraud systems?
To effectively connect merchants and make payments, it is necessary to be able to test a particular region, a certain type of business, or specific issuing banks. There is also a need to test the anti-fraud system itself in order to understand its effectiveness on real payments.
Many merchants ask to add their cards or email addresses to the white list so that they can independently verify the good conversion of payments before launching the main traffic. This can be allowed, but some nuances must be taken into account.
Analysis of test transactions from the very beginning allows you to form an idea of what the expected traffic will be. Obviously, attempts to test payments from countries that are completely closed or even declared by the client as unnecessary for his business will certainly raise suspicions.
There are also cases when for a certain amount, say, $ 99, a merchant issues such payments for test transactions, trying to justify them, when in fact these may be sales of regulated or prescription drugs at such a price. As for individuals, during the testing stages, one can see numerous attempts to pay with credit cards in the name of other people or bank transfers coming from various sources that have no common logical explanation.
All this may indicate that the attackers are preparing to test the system for their further illegal purposes. Later, with the real functioning of the anti-fraud system, such masking schemes become more sophisticated. Attackers use so-called "drop accounts" and "one-day cards" to hide the final beneficiary of illegal transactions. Regular transfers of small amounts, splitting large payments into smaller transactions, and using VPN services to mask IP addresses are all tools in the arsenal of those trying to bypass control systems and launder illegal income.
Particular caution should be exercised with transactions related to cryptocurrencies, as they provide an additional level of anonymity. As an additional limitation option, a limit should be introduced for each test transaction, for example, no more than 3 dollars or the equivalent in another currency.
You can also set a total limit for each merchant of no more than 100 dollars per month. This amount is quite enough for tests and at the same time it will not be possible to cause damage with such an amount. The principle of minimum sufficiency will be observed here.
In general, it can be concluded that organizing a test environment with a reasonable approach will not be something dangerous.
