Merchants receive incoming orders in a variety of ways—not just through their online storefront. For some merchants, phone orders even make up 30-40% of their business! Because of this, it’s important to understand the significance of each backoffice order placement method and their indemnification coverage.

Bolt recommends using indemnified methods of backoffice order placement whenever possible to maximize your coverage and minimize risk. Remember, Bolt represents merchants during the dispute process for all indemnified orders, meaning less work for your team in the long-run.

Quick Tips

• Always: Ensure that your team’s devices have the Guest-Only Checkout protection enabled from Device Management.
• Always: Use only the 3 step checkout experience as a guest.
• Never: Create a Bolt Account on behalf of a shopper.
• Never: Save information on behalf of a shopper.
• Never: Request the One Time Password (OTP) 6 digit verification number from shoppers.

Indemnified Methods

There are two backoffice order facilitation methods that are supported by Bolt’s indemnification coverage. Let’s take a look.

Step 1: Using the Platform Console

You can process incoming backoffice orders through your organization’s platform of choice. When selecting Bolt as the checkout or payment method inside of your platform’s order entry interface, a 1-step Bolt Checkout modal is presented and all necessary fraud signals can be collected.

You can read more about each platform’s phone order placement process in our Platform Operations Guides section.

Step 2: Using Pay by Link

Merchants can build an order on behalf of the shopper and then generate a link that is sent to the shopper’s email address. This enables the shopper to input their payment information themselves. On top of enabling Bolt to capture fraud signals, this method has two major benefits:

• Security: The shopper doesn’t have to share their payment information over the phone or through email.
• Trust: The shopper gets to review the total and have control over their purchasing experience.

Non-Indemnified Methods

Step 1: Using the Storefront

Sometimes it may seem easier to use your storefront to place a backoffice order on behalf of a shopper, however by doing so you take on added risk in the event the order is fraudulent. This is because Bolt cannot collect enough relevant fraud signals when the shopper is removed from the checkout process.

Step 2: Using the Virtual Terminal

Similarly to storefront orders, the Virtual Terminal in the Bolt Merchant Dashboard does not collect fraud signals due to being an internal tool—and because of this, orders placed via the Virtual Terminal cannot be indemnified by Bolt.