About Phorest

Phorest provides salon, spa, and medspa management software to thousands of hair, beauty, and aesthetics businesses across North America, the UK, Europe, and Australia. PhorestPay is an integrated payment platform, powered by Stripe Connect, enabling online and in-person payments for appointment deposits, gift cards, cardless checkout , as well as solutions for booth-renters/self-employed staff, and the industry-leading PhorestTips tipping feature. 

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Growing Global Payments - With Risk Gaps Exposed

As PhorestPay expanded internationally, payments became mission-critical for salon cash flow. Seamless onboarding and mitigation of fraud and credit losses were table stakes. Every payout carried reputational weight: a failed settlement could mean a salon, spa, or clinic struggling with payroll or rent.

But the risk process wasn’t built for scale, payments and billing teams raised flags ad hoc. Problems surfaced late - sometimes when Stripe applied account restrictions, other times via social posts announcing a business closure.

The stakes were rising:

• Thousands of merchants across multiple regions with different payment norms
  
• Point tools focused only on transaction fraud - missing onboarding risk, credit exposure, and sudden behavioral shifts
  
  

“It was difficult to detect fraud and inauthentic behavior at scale, and reviews were reactive at best.” - Siobhán O’Connor, Head of Payment Operations, Phorest

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Why Phorest Chose Coris

A negative event prompted a hard question: Could this have been caught earlier? Coris ran historical data through its AI-powered platform and showed that early warning signals could have been flagged well in advance, helping avoid or mitigate exposure. 

That proof point, plus Coris’ flexibility and responsiveness, convinced Phorest to build a proactive risk strategy on a platform designed for software companies.

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Implementation: Fast, Simple, AI-Ready

With Coris’ no-code integration for software platforms, Phorest was live in days and began immediately addressing risky merchants. From day one, Coris’ AI began scanning merchant and payments data for anomalies and patterns humans would likely miss.

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The Solution: AI-Powered Risk Across the Merchant Lifecycle

What began with onboarding evolved into full lifecycle monitoring. Today, Coris continuously evaluates thousands of merchants, surfacing risks Phorest’s team wouldn’t otherwise see.

With Coris, Phorest can:

• Onboard safely: AI flags potentially fraudulent or high-risk businesses at sign-up using multiple data signals.
  
• Spot unusual behavior early: Concentrated payer exposure, refund spikes, negative balances, or excessive chargebacks trigger automated alerts.
  
• Anticipate churn and financial distress: Insights highlight merchants at risk before disputes start or accounts lapse.
  
• Proactively support customers: Alerts on failed payouts and other exceptions are routed to the right teams, so salons, spas, and clinics receive help before issues escalate.
  
• Customize controls: Phorest blends domain knowledge with Coris’ AI to catch scenarios unique to their business.
  
  

In action:

• A salon flagged for rising refunds was trending toward distress. Coris surfaced the pattern early, allowing Phorest to intervene before losses mounted.
  
• Failed-payout alerts enabled proactive outreach - turning potential churn moments into customer-satisfaction wins.
  
  

“Coris supports our goal of “we know before they call” - we can identify a customer issue before a customer has to pick up the phone to us.” - Brian O’Sullivan, Risk Operations Strategist, Phorest

Results at a Glance

• Hours saved daily: AI triages and prioritizes alerts so teams focus on what matters.
  
• Faster reviews: Manual checks are now completed in just minutes, down from 20–30 minutes.
  
• Dedicated risk function: Coris provides the foundation for a scalable, owned risk strategy.
  
• AI-powered visibility: Risks surface that manual reviews would miss entirely.
  
• Predictive detection: Phorest anticipates churn and financial distress before customers self-report.
  
• Happier customers: Proactive outreach on failed payouts improves transparency and trust.
  
  

Advice to Other Platforms

“It often takes an event for a platform to consider external risk tools. Relying only on your payment processor is not a strategy. Invest in your risk team and give them tools like Coris to identify, mitigate, and manage risks effectively. The support from Coris has been excellent, with rapid turnaround on both product requests and operational questions.” - Siobhán O’Connor, Head of Payment Operations, Phorest‍