How do I install CustomerGenius in my Shopify store?

Click Install app in the Shopify App Store and approve the requested permissions. Our onboarding wizard opens automatically inside Shopify Admin, guiding you through setting your fraud detection thresholds and running a one-time data sync across your last 60 days of orders. Most merchants are fully configured in under 10 minutes.

Does CustomerGenius start refunding orders the moment I install it?

No — auto-refund is disabled by default, so you're always in control. During onboarding you set the fraud score threshold at which orders are flagged. You can choose to manually review flagged orders for a period to build confidence in the scoring, or enable automatic refunds right away. Either way, you'll receive an email notification each time a suspicious order is detected.

What signals feed the fraud score?

CustomerGenius checks every new order against all previous orders that used the same discount code. It compares email addresses, phone numbers, billing addresses, shipping addresses (both exact and fuzzy matching), and customer names. Each field that matches a prior order adds points to the fraud score. Fuzzy matching catches small variations like transposed letters or different address formats that a simple exact match would miss.

Can CustomerGenius detect abuse across a family of similar codes (e.g. SAVE10, SAVE20, SAVE30)?

Yes — this is what cross-evaluation discount groups solve. Add codes to the monitored list individually, or use a wildcard like SAVE* to group an entire family of codes into a single eligibility pool. CustomerGenius then scores incoming orders using any code in the group against prior orders using any other code in the group. It's the right setting when customers rotate through different codes from the same campaign to dodge per-code limits.

Does CustomerGenius work with order tags as well as discount codes?

Yes. Some promotions don't flow through a discount code — gift-with-purchase, BFCM offers tagged at the order level, influencer flags, and so on. Add the tag to the monitored list in settings and CustomerGenius applies the same identity-based abuse detection it uses for discount codes. Wildcard prefixes work for tags too, so you can group whole families of campaign tags together.

Can different discount codes have different fraud thresholds or actions?

Yes — custom automation rules let you set per-code (or per-tag) fraud-score thresholds and choose whether to refund, place the order on fulfillment hold, or take no automatic action. Rules are matched in priority order, so you can override the default behavior for high-value or sensitive codes without changing how everything else is treated. If no custom rule matches, the default threshold from your settings applies.

Can the app observe abuse for a while before refunding automatically?

Yes. Every automation rule has an occurrence setting from 2 to 10. Occurrence 2 means act the second time an identity hits the rule; occurrence 3 means wait until the third; and so on, up to 10. Many merchants start at 3 or 4 to confirm patterns are real before going aggressive, then tighten the threshold once they trust the matches. It's the safest way to roll out auto-refunds on a new code.

Can I adjust how much weight each signal carries in the fraud score?

Yes. In the Fraud Score Rules tab you can tune the points awarded for each signal — exact shipping address, billing address, fuzzy address, phone, email, full name, first name, last name — and the threshold at which a customer is considered suspicious. The defaults work well for most stores; adjust only if you're seeing too many false positives or want stricter scoring on a specific signal.

What exactly happens when an order is refunded?

CustomerGenius issues a full refund through the Shopify API and optionally sends an automated email to you and the customer explaining the cancellation. If you have Recharge connected, any associated subscription is cancelled there as well. If you use ShipStation, the order is cancelled before it ships. All refund activity is logged in your CustomerGenius dashboard for monthly reporting.

Can I run a discount that's used once on my online store but applies on every subscription renewal?

Yes. Enable the Skip recurring subscription orders toggle in settings and renewal orders from Recharge and other supported subscription apps are excluded from fraud evaluation entirely. That means a discount code intended to be used only once on online store orders can keep auto-applying on every recurring renewal without each renewal triggering a duplicate-use refund — fraud checks run on the original online order, not on the renewals. As a side benefit, your existing subscribers also never get flagged for placing legitimate repeat orders that share the same address, email, or phone.

Can I block specific customers from ordering at all, regardless of discount use?

Yes — this is a separate feature from discount monitoring. The block list is for customers you've decided not to serve, like repeat chargeback filers or people who've abused your support team. Add a tag to a customer in Shopify and CustomerGenius will refund any future order from anyone matching their identity — even if they sign up with a new email, phone, or address. The block follows the person, not just the email.

Will CustomerGenius slow down my checkout?

No — CustomerGenius has zero impact on checkout speed. All fraud detection happens post-checkout via Shopify's order webhooks. Your storefront, cart, and payment flow are completely unaffected. Customers experience no difference at checkout regardless of whether their order is later flagged.

Is there a free trial for CustomerGenius?

Yes. All three pricing tiers include a 14-day free trial with full access to every feature — no credit card required to start. There is no permanent free tier, but the trial period is designed to give you enough data to see exactly how much discount fraud exists in your store and whether the subscription pays for itself (on average, merchants save 11x their monthly cost in recovered discounts).

What happens to customers who are caught abusing discounts?

Their order is refunded and they receive an optional notification email. Interestingly, based on aggregate data from CustomerGenius merchants, 38% of customers who are caught repurchase at full price — meaning catching fraud often converts an abusive customer into a profitable one.

How do I get help if something looks wrong?

Email our support team directly at support@customergenius.io. We're run by Shopify merchants ourselves and respond quickly to questions about fraud scoring, threshold tuning, or integration issues.

Comparison

CustomerGenius vs. Signifyd, Riskified, and Forter

The major enterprise fraud platforms — Signifyd, Riskified, Forter — are built to prevent payment fraud and chargebacks for stores doing tens of millions in GMV. CustomerGenius is built to prevent discount code abuse for stores of any size. They're solving very different problems at very different price points.

TL;DR

Signifyd, Riskified, and Forter are excellent at what they do: prevent stolen-card chargebacks for high-volume stores, typically with a chargeback guarantee where they cover the loss if a transaction they approved turns out to be fraudulent. They charge a percentage of order value (often 0.5–1.5% of GMV) and target merchants doing $10M+ in annual revenue. CustomerGenius solves a different problem — repeat redemption of first-time-customer discounts by the same person under throwaway emails — at a flat $9.99–$29.99/month with no GMV cut. If you're a high-AOV store losing money to chargebacks, those platforms are worth their cost. If your problem is discount stacking, you need different tooling.

Feature-by-feature comparison

Feature	CustomerGenius	enterprise fraud platforms	Notes
Detects stolen credit card / chargeback fraud	—	✓	Their core focus
Provides chargeback guarantee	—	✓	They reimburse on approved-but-fraudulent
Detects discount code abuse across emails	✓	—	Not their use case
Identity matching across email, phone, name, address	✓	Partial	They match for payment risk, not discount abuse
Fuzzy address matching for cross-order identity	✓	Partial
Cross-evaluation discount groups	✓	—
Configurable per-code automation rules	✓	—
Subscription-aware (skip Recharge renewals)	✓	—
Designed for $10M+ GMV merchants	Any size	✓
Pricing model	Flat $9.99–$29.99/mo	% of GMV	Typically $5K+/mo minimum
Shopify App Store install	✓	Partial	Enterprise platforms require integration

What enterprise fraud platforms are designed for

Signifyd, Riskified, and Forter all solve the same core problem in slightly different ways: they use machine-learning models to score every incoming order at checkout for the likelihood of payment fraud — stolen cards, account takeover, identity theft — and either auto-approve or auto-decline based on a configurable risk threshold. Critically, they offer a chargeback guarantee: if the platform approves a transaction that later results in a chargeback, the platform reimburses the merchant. That guarantee is the value proposition. It transforms chargeback risk into a fixed cost that scales with GMV.

Why their pricing model doesn't fit discount-abuse use cases

Enterprise fraud platforms charge a percentage of order value — typically in the 0.5–1.5% range — because the chargeback risk they're absorbing scales with order value. That model makes sense when you're spending $50K/month on the platform to prevent $200K/month in chargebacks. It doesn't make sense for a store that doesn't have significant chargeback exposure but does have discount abuse. A merchant losing $2,000/month to discount stacking can't justify a $5,000/month minimum spend on an enterprise fraud platform — especially since those platforms don't focus on discount abuse anyway.

What CustomerGenius does that they don't

Enterprise platforms look at order risk in isolation: is THIS order likely to be fraudulent? CustomerGenius looks at customer identity across orders: has this person — across all their email addresses, phone numbers, and shipping addresses — already used this discount code, or any code in the same eligibility group? It's a fundamentally different question, with different signals and a different scoring model. Address matching is fuzzy. Discount codes can be grouped with wildcards (SAVE* matches SAVE10, SAVE20, etc.). Custom automation rules let you tune per-code thresholds and actions. None of that exists in payment-fraud platforms because they're solving a different problem.

When you'd run both

A merchant doing $20M+ in GMV with significant chargeback exposure might run Signifyd or Riskified for payment fraud AND CustomerGenius for discount abuse. The two systems don't conflict — they evaluate different aspects of every order. Enterprise platforms approve or decline at checkout; CustomerGenius evaluates post-checkout against historical identity patterns. At smaller scale (under ~$5M GMV), Shopify's built-in fraud filter plus CustomerGenius covers most stores adequately, without the cost of an enterprise platform.

Pricing comparison

CustomerGenius pricing is flat: $9.99/month up to 2,500 monthly orders, $19.99/month up to 5,000, $29.99/month above that. There's no percentage of GMV. There's no minimum spend. There's no chargeback insurance — because CustomerGenius doesn't underwrite chargebacks. Enterprise platforms typically negotiate a custom rate based on GMV, transaction count, and the fraud insurance they provide; expect a quote in the $5,000–$50,000+/month range with annual contracts.

Which one should I use?

If you're doing $10M+ in GMV and losing money to chargebacks: get a Signifyd, Riskified, or Forter quote — they're built for you. If your problem is people redeeming first-time-customer discounts over and over again under throwaway emails, regardless of your store size: that's specifically what CustomerGenius is built for. Many of our merchants run both — the systems cover different parts of the fraud surface area and don't compete. The free trial scans your last 60 days of orders and shows you exactly how much discount abuse exists before you commit.

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