Vanished Merchant Protocol
When a merchant disappears, every exposed shopper is protected before they call.
The job
Spots a merchant collapse early from what customers say (no deliveries, a closed store, a dead website) and protects every exposed customer in one approved batch before they have to call.
The moment
At 16:40 on Tuesday, a buy now, pay later provider gets its fourth message saying a store is closed and nothing was delivered. That trips the merchant's alert, and the COO's phone lights up.
The app replays the early pattern of the last merchant collapse and shows this one matches it, 9 days earlier.
The COO approves protecting every exposed shopper in one batch.
By Wednesday noon, 1,840 shoppers have their installments paused and a WhatsApp message saying "we've got this". Most hear it from the provider before reading about the merchant in the news.
What it does
- Check exposure
- Approve the protocol batch
- Notify customers
- Resume or cancel installments
- Save the pattern and close the incident
What you see
Incident protocol: a watchlist, a pattern replay, an exposure ledger with a one-page approval card, and cohort follow-up; a wall screen for the incident bridge
What it moves
Contacts and regulator mentions per exposed customer after a merchant collapse, compared with the last collapse where customers weren't protected; days from first signal to protection; and dollars recovered through disputes.
Built for
- Operations
- Risk & fraud
- CX leaders & VoC
