Driving Profit, Cutting Chargeback Fraud: A Conversation with Dimitri Akhrin, President of BAMS

At Microblink, our mission is to make every digital interaction a trusted one. We help financial institutions, fintechs, and merchants verify identity with accuracy and speed, using AI and advanced data signals to stop fraud before it impacts the customer experience.

That’s why we recently sat down for a Q&A with Dimitri Akhrin, President of BAMS. In the ever-evolving world of online payments, few names stand out quite like BAMS. As one of the top-rated merchant services providers in the U.S., BAMS helps e-commerce businesses increase profit and decrease costs through lowered fraud rates. We talked with Dimitri about how technology, data, and partnerships are transforming fraud prevention and fueling growth for merchants worldwide.

Dimitri, you founded BAMS on the premise of long-term relationships, transparency, and delivering real value. How would you describe BAMS’s mission today, especially in the e-commerce space?

Dimitri Akhrin: At its core, our mission hasn’t changed, we want to be a true partner to merchants, not just a processor. But the way that mission comes to life has evolved. For e-commerce businesses, the biggest challenge today is balancing growth with risk. Fraud, chargebacks, and transaction delays all eat into margins, so our goal is simple: help merchants increase profit and decrease costs through lowered fraud rates.

We achieve that by combining competitive pricing with intelligent analytics, proactive risk monitoring, and a support model that guides merchants toward smarter decisions. When you reduce fraud, you reduce costs, and that directly translates into higher profitability. That’s the foundation of everything we do.

Microblink’s technology focuses on AI-driven document capture and identity verification. How do you see this aligning with BAMS’s approach to payments and fraud management?

Dimitri Akhrin: It aligns perfectly. Microblink’s model, using machine learning to verify identities and documents, is addressing one of the most critical points of failure in e-commerce: knowing who’s on the other side of the transaction. At BAMS, we’ve always believed that fraud prevention should start before the payment is processed.

By integrating solutions like Microblink’s, we can help merchants authenticate customers earlier in the flow. That means fewer fraudulent transactions and chargebacks later. The combination of Microblink’s verification technology with our payment analytics platform creates a seamless, end-to-end ecosystem that protects merchants while improving conversion rates. It’s not about adding friction, it’s about adding confidence.

What do you see as the biggest fraud-related challenges for e-commerce merchants right now?

Dimitri Akhrin: Fraudsters are evolving faster than ever. What worked a year ago doesn’t necessarily work today. Merchants face a constant game of catch-up, new schemes, new synthetic identities, new tactics to exploit vulnerabilities. On top of that, they often lack visibility. Many don’t have integrated tools to monitor risk across different channels or devices, so they’re reacting after the damage is done instead of preventing it.

Another challenge is the balance between fraud prevention and customer experience. If you tighten your rules too much, you block good customers. If you loosen them, fraud slips through. The key is smart automation, using data and identity intelligence to stop bad actors while keeping the checkout experience smooth. And finally, compliance and regulatory pressures keep growing, so merchants need partners who understand how to manage both the technology and the rules that come with it.

BAMS has earned a reputation as a top-rated provider in this space. What have you done internally to reach that level, especially when it comes to fraud reduction?

Dimitri Akhrin: It really comes down to a blend of technology, culture, and transparency. We’ve built proprietary reporting tools, our IRIS platform, that give merchants real-time visibility into everything from transactions to chargebacks to funding timelines. That transparency empowers merchants to take control of their own data.

We’ve also invested heavily in speed and cash flow solutions, like same-day and next-day funding, because financial flexibility reduces risk and helps businesses stay agile. On the fraud side, we integrate advanced verification tools and continuously refine our monitoring processes so that merchants can focus on selling, not fighting disputes. And most importantly, we’ve built a culture of education. Every team member at BAMS understands e-commerce platforms, gateways, and APIs, which means our merchants get informed guidance at every step.

Transparency and expertise, that’s what earns trust, and trust is what makes us a top-rated provider.

Looking forward, how do you see the collaboration between BAMS and Microblink evolving, and what benefits can merchants expect?

Dimitri Akhrin: I see it as a long-term strategic alignment. By combining our payments infrastructure with Microblink’s AI verification technology, merchants can expect smoother onboarding, smarter risk profiling, and fewer chargebacks. Together, we’re creating a model that doesn’t just stop fraud but helps businesses run more efficiently.

We’re also working toward giving merchants richer insights, connecting verification scores with transaction outcomes to show which segments are most profitable and least risky. That’s the kind of data that helps businesses make better decisions.

At the end of the day, both BAMS and Microblink share the same goal: helping e-commerce merchants increase profit and decrease costs through lowered fraud rates. That’s the value we’re committed to delivering, and this partnership makes it even stronger.

Closing:

Thank you, Dimitri, for sharing your perspective on how innovation and collaboration are reshaping the merchant services industry. It’s clear that with BAMS’s commitment to transparency and Microblink’s intelligent verification solutions, the future of fraud prevention, and merchant profitability, has never looked brighter.