What fraud decisioning does well
A fraud service applies risk signals, authentication and review rules to payments. Stripe Radar, for example, documents rules that allow, block or review payments, plus 3D Secure controls. That is real decision-making, not just a fraud score.
Compare a provider’s signals, payment methods, authentication and review tools with the risk you need to manage. Fraud services differ, and many support custom business rules.
Stripe Radar: fraud prevention rules. Stripe documents payment allow, block and review rules plus authentication controls for its own service.
Separate payment risk from the economics of the action
As an illustration, an order can pass a payment-risk check and still sell below your margin floor because of its costs and discounts. The reverse is also true: a good margin does not make a payment legitimate. These are different questions, not a measured result for either service.
Commerce Gate checks the facts you send for price, stock, order, fulfillment, promotion, refund or return actions; through the MCP, those checks run in Shadow Mode. What each platform can stop varies, and a policy answer never gives an agent permission to charge, refund or change another system.
For refunds, inspect policy and execution separately
On Walmart, Commerce Gate checks each refund against what is left to refund, your unattended limit and earlier refunds on the same line. A refund above your limit goes to a named approver, and a second refund on the same line is held for review. That is a policy check on the refund, not a fraud screen of the payment or the customer.
The Walmart refund is still sent only when your operator confirms it. If the refund policy check is unavailable, refunds up to a set fallback limit go ahead and larger ones wait. An agent that gets an MCP error instead of an answer must stop and wait.
What Commerce Gate covers today
Walmart refunds: operator-confirmed
Checked against your refund policy first (refundable balance, unattended limit, repeat refund), with dossier evidence where supported; sent only when your operator confirms.
Before you choose, see what happens on each platform during an outage and how we check integration status. Signed Decision Dossiers come where the platform supports them; some outage fallbacks and operator-confirmed actions are recorded without one.
How to choose
Use fraud controls for the payment risks they are designed to assess
Keep your payment provider’s fraud, authentication and review controls, chosen for your own risk and review needs rather than a commerce-policy answer.
Add commerce policy for a separate action boundary
Add Commerce Gate when the missing check is about margin, stock, transaction or refund policy. If you need both, honor both answers; one service’s approval never stands in for the other’s.