Zift modernized its merchant risk program by consolidating data, streamlining investigations, and enabling faster, more confident decisions. With Coris, the team now reviews more merchants in less time, eliminates manual research, and identifies risk earlier.
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Impact at a Glance

• Daily merchant reviews completed faster, even with higher alert volume
• Broader portfolio coverage without increasing headcount
• 30% reduction in overall review time
• Earlier merchant outreach and fewer delayed payouts
• High-risk or misrepresented merchants flagged earlier in the lifecycle
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About Zift

Zift is a registered ISO supporting merchants across a wide range of industries. It provides Payments-as-a-Service with omni-channel support including EMV, card-not-present, and ACH payments from a unified platform.

Before adopting Coris, Zift’s risk team relied on a legacy provider and manual research to evaluate merchants. As volume increased, the team needed a more reliable, flexible, and efficient way to understand merchant activity and manage investigations.
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The Challenge

Zift’s previous risk system generated inconsistent alerts and offered limited control over rules. The team frequently questioned whether transactions were being flagged appropriately, and even small logic adjustments required working through the vendor. This slowed response times and made it difficult to trust the system.

Investigations also required switching between several tools to confirm merchant history, review documents, or check prior behavior. Even simple reviews required multiple tabs and repeated searches, which delayed decisions and created friction for merchants whose payouts were held pending verification.

With a lean team balancing risk review and underwriting responsibilities, Zift needed a modern platform that was accurate, flexible, and fast.
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“We did not feel like we could rely on the alerts with our previous provider. Things were getting missed, and we did not have the ability to adjust rules ourselves.” - Joe Libby, VP of Risk and Credit, Zift

Why Zift Chose Coris

Zift evaluated several alternatives, including established legacy providers and transaction-focused monitoring tools. Coris stood out for its AI-first platform, transparent controls, and ability to consolidate insights across merchant and transaction risk.

The platform provided clear visibility into merchant behavior, intuitive rule management, and a roadmap aligned with how modern risk teams operate. Coris also supported ingestion of multiple data sources, including internal signals and processor data such as from TSYS, which enabled Zift to evolve and refine its program more quickly.

Equally important, the Coris team operated as a true partner. Fast response times, direct collaboration, and deep risk expertise were central to Zift’s decision.
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The Solution

Zift implemented Coris with an initial set of core risk strategies focused on the highest-impact financial risks. Over time, the team expanded to include behavioral and compliance-driven indicators that identify merchants whose activity deviates from expected patterns.

Coris centralizes all the context the Zift risk team needs to evaluate a merchant: documents, historical behavior, risk notes, transaction context, and processor alerts. Large or unusual transactions can now be reviewed quickly in a single workflow, eliminating the need for manual research across multiple systems.

The team also uses Coris’ backtesting feature to refine rules before deployment. This has allowed Zift to remove unnecessary alerts, maintain a clean queue, and ensure that daily review time is spent on the activity that matters most.
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The Results

Faster, more focused reviews

Zift significantly reduced the time required to complete daily merchant reviews. Analysts work from a single system with all relevant context available immediately. Even as alert volume increases, the team completes its work faster and with fewer interruptions. Overall, 30% reduction in the review time spent by the team.

A clean queue that reflects real risk

By iterating on rule sets and validating changes through backtesting, Zift eliminated false positives. Alerts consistently represent meaningful behavior, improving both coverage and operational efficiency.

Better merchant experience with faster follow-up

Because reviews are completed earlier and require far less manual effort, Zift reaches out to merchants sooner, resolves questions quickly, and releases funds without unnecessary delay. The result is fewer payout holds and a smoother merchant experience.
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“Coris hit all the buckets for us. The technology, the flexibility, the visibility, and the partnership were exactly what we were missing before. The impact on our daily operations has been significant.” - Joe Libby, VP of Risk and Credit, Zift‍