Report a transaction

Reporting transactions as chargebacks, suspected fraud, spam/abuse, and/or false positive (not fraud) to MaxMind helps us detect about 10-50% more fraud and reduce false positives for you.

You can report a transaction manually through the account portal’s web form or your minFraud Transactions page. This guide will show you how to programmatically report a transaction using our official client libraries.

Implementation

MaxMind offers and highly recommends using official client libraries to access the Report Transation API. If you cannot or do not wish to use our client libraries, please review our minFraud Report Transaction API Documentation for details on our JSON API.

1. Install the minFraud client library

We have a collection of officially supported libraries for you to interact with the minFraud API:

2. Create and submit a transaction report object

A transaction report only needs two things, the IP address of the customer that placed the order and a "tag". A "tag" can be one of the following values:

Tag	Description
Chargeback	Used to associate a chargeback with a transaction
Not fraud	Used to report a transaction that was later identified as a false positive
Spam or Abuse	Used to report a transaction that was linked to spam or abuse
Suspected fraud	Used to report a high risk transaction where fraud has not yet been confirmed

We highly encourage you to include the MaxMind ID or minFraud ID that identifies the minFraud Standard/Premium request or minFraud Score/Insights/Factors request respectively. Alternatively, you can send us the transaction ID you originally passed to the minFraud service.

The transaction report object may optionally contain a chargeback code and notes about the transaction you would like to share with MaxMind. MaxMind manually reviews many reported transactions, so any additional details you provide to help us understand context are extremely helpful.

Validation and error handling

By default, our client libaries will throw an exception if any of the transaction report object's values are invalid. The exception is thrown when the object is constructed; the python library will raise an error when the minFraud service method is called.

If the report transaction request fails, our client libraires will throw an exception, raise an error (python), or reject the promise (node).

For more information on errors and exceptions, including their types and descriptions, go to the specific library's documentation page.

API Documentation

The HTTP API requires you to pass a set of parameters as JSON via an HTTP POST.

The URI for this service is https://minfraud.maxmind.com/minfraud/v2.0/transactions/report.

The minfraud.maxmind.com hostname automatically picks the data center geographically closest to you.

Authorization and Security

The HTTP Authorization header is required for authorization. The username is your MaxMind account ID. The password is your MaxMind license key.

You must be approved for a trial or purchase credit for use with our web services in order to receive an account ID and license key.

We use basic HTTP authentication. The APIs which require authentication are only available via HTTPS. The credentials are never transmitted unencrypted. If you attempt to access this service via HTTP, you will receive a 403 Forbidden HTTP response.

We require TLS 1.2 or greater for all requests to our servers to keep your data secure.

Request Headers

The Content-Type header should always be application/json.

Request Body

The minFraud API accepts input as JSON in the body of an HTTP POST. The JSON document should consist of a single object. That object may contain the following keys (key names are case-sensitive):

Name	Type	Description
ip_address	string	Required. The IP address of the customer placing the order. This should be passed as a string like “44.55.66.77” or “2001:db8::2:1”.
tag	string	Required. A string indicating the likelihood that a transaction may be fraudulent. Possible values: `not_fraud`, `suspected_fraud`, `spam_or_abuse`, or `chargeback`.
chargeback_code	string	Optional. A string which is provided by your payment processor indicating the reason for the chargeback.
maxmind_id	string (8)	Optional. A unique eight character string identifying a minFraud Standard or Premium request. These IDs are returned in the `maxmindID` field of a response for a successful minFraud request. This field is not required, but you are encouraged to provide it, if possible.
minfraud_id	string (36)	Optional. A UUID that identifies a minFraud Score, minFraud Insights, or minFraud Factors request. This ID is returned at `/id` in the response. This field is not required, but you are encouraged to provide it if the request was made to one of these services.
notes	string	Optional. Your notes on the fraud tag associated with the transaction. We manually review many reported transactions to improve our scoring for you so any additional details to help us understand context are helpful.
transaction_id	string	Optional. The transaction ID you originally passed to minFraud. This field is not required, but you are encouraged to provide it or the transaction’s `maxmind_id` or `minfraud_id`.

Response

HTTP status codes are used to relay success and error messages. A successful POST will return a 204 (No Content) status code.

When the server returns an error (4xx or 5xx), the response may include a JSON document in the body. This document is a single object with the keys code and error. The code field is a static error code for machine use. The value of any given code will never change, though codes can be added or removed. The error field is a human-readable description of the error and may change at any time.

Not all errors include a JSON body. An error in content negotiation will not include a body, nor will many 5xx errors, which typically happen outside of our web service request handling code. You should check the Content-Type type of an error response before attempting to decode the body as JSON.

In addition to the errors documented below, client code should also be prepared to handle any valid HTTP 4xx or 5xx status code.

Error Code	HTTP Status	Description
JSON_INVALID	400 Bad Request	Your JSON could not be parsed.
MAXMIND_ID_INVALID	400 Bad Request	You have supplied an invalid `maxmind_id`. This field is case sensitive. Check your `maxmind_id` to ensure that it is 8 characters in length and made up only of digits and upper case letters. This value must come from the successful response to a previous minFraud request.
MINFRAUD_ID_INVALID	400 Bad Request	You have supplied an invalid `minfraud_id`. Check your `minfraud_id` to ensure that it is a valid UUID as returned in the minFraud Score, minFraud Insights, or minFraud Factors response.
PARAMETER_UNKNOWN	400 Bad Request	You have supplied an unknown parameter. Check the keys in your JSON data to ensure that you have not misspelled any of the field names or passed a field name which is not listed in the available input fields.
TAG_REQUIRED	400 Bad Request	Your request does not include a `tag` field.
TAG_INVALID	400 Bad Request	Your request includes an invalid `tag` field.
IP_ADDRESS_INVALID	400 Bad Request	You have not supplied a valid IPv4 or IPv6 address.
IP_ADDRESS_REQUIRED	400 Bad Request	You have not supplied an IP address, which is a required field.
IP_ADDRESS_RESERVED	400 Bad Request	You have supplied an IP address which belongs to a reserved or private range.
AUTHORIZATION_INVALID	401 Unauthorized	You have supplied an invalid MaxMind account ID and/or license key in the Authorization header.
LICENSE_KEY_REQUIRED	401 Unauthorized	You have not supplied a MaxMind license key in the Authorization header.
ACCOUNT_ID_REQUIRED	401 Unauthorized	You have not supplied a MaxMind account ID in the Authorization header.
(none)	415 Unsupported Media Type	Your request included a `Content-Type` header that is not supported. For `GET` requests, this means the web service cannot return content of that type. For `PUT` and `POST` queries, this means the web service cannot parse a request body of that type.
(none)	503 Service Not Available	There is a problem with the web service server. You can try this request again later.

Example using curl

This page was last updated on April 12, 2024.