To assist online merchants, and in association with some of the industry’s most prominent experts, such as Merchant911, preCharge announces its Top Ten Fraud Prevention Tips for Online Retailers:
1) Address Verification Service (AVS) and Card Verification Value Code
(CVV/CV2) matches alone will not protect merchants. Most banks do not
honor a valid match as a merchant dispute for a chargeback, and a
CVV/CV2 number is just as easy to steal as the billing address.
2) Collect the Internet Protocol (IP) address of your visitors. The IP
address is invaluable for tracking fraud. ARIN (http://www.arin.net/)
can tell you the company that an IP address is registered to and the
country itself.
3) If you can’t verify an order and your instinct tells you not to
accept it, then don’t. While rejecting a valid order certainly isn’t
a good thing, a chargeback is worse.
4) Require an adult signature upon delivery, even if a customer requests
otherwise.
5) UPS and FedEx offer change in shipping notifications free of charge.
Fraudsters often ship packages to a legitimate address, getting AVS
match and bank verification, only to re-route the package in transit.
Notifications known as “exception reports” can be sent via email and
are invaluable to stopping packages from ending up in a fraudster’s
hands.
6) When in doubt, require two credit cards for verification. A scammer
with one stolen card is common, a scammer with two cards from the
same cardholder is rare.
7) Search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, can aide in your screening
process. Search for the customer name, phone number and IP
addresses. Fraudsters can often be found online, referenced in
forums and directories.
8) Most counties now have property records online. Try searching
housing records to validate the customer’s residency.
9) Include your policies and customer service information with every
shipment and make your return policy easy to understand.
10) Confirm your merchant account descriptor (the name and phone number
your customers see) is correct. A customer’s inability to contact
you can result in bad public relations and even chargebacks. Test a
$1.00 charge to your personal credit card; never assume that the
information is correct.
