Do any hosting companies support this?
Any experiences? Its getting popular fast, and i just ordered it myself.

It seems to work well, it's support is quite limited though. I'm not sure if it would be wise to only accept verified by visa signups. The only problem is see is that it's another password consumers have to remember. It's probably also just a matter of time before this system is hit by the phishing scams.

It's not really the hosting company having to support it, but your CC processor. It goes over to the company that Visa contracts out with to do this. And then sends data over to the gateway - so the gateway has to support it as well.

Our CC processor offers it and I can sum it up in two words - NO Chargebacks:

"What is Verified by Visa?
It is a simple process that verifies the cardholder's identity by use of a password, and takes only seconds to use. Your customers can feel comfortable using their credit card to purchase from your site. And more importantly for you the merchant, if a customer were to dispute a charge by saying "it wasn't me who made the purchase" - the transaction will NOT be charged back to your business"

Just keep in mind that it does not cover all the reasons that you might have a chargebacks. It covers the main one - I didn't do it. It does not cover I didn't like the service.

In essence, Verified by Visa is a good step in the right direction.

But, as Corey mentions, it still won't protect against an unreasonable customer who charges back because they didn't like the service or had a change of heart or simply don't want to pay.

There isn't and there won't ever really be a 100% protection against chargebacks but initiatives like Verified by Visa and MasterCard's SecureCode are at least good supplements to what has been a largely issuer-biased system.

Also one other thing for recurring payments. The Verified by Visa only covers the first one with the customer interaction. After that one, it is not covered. The program relies on the customer actually hitting that submit button. They could literally come back on the second month & thereafter to say they did not know they were going to be billed monthly, etc.

Right... that's a good point. The only way around that would be if a merchant were using Verified by Visa -and- they were doing recurring invoices as opposed to true recurring billings. (that way, the customer could "opt in" each time)

Of course, there is always the perpetual tradeoff between strong, reliable cashflow vs. the risk of an occasional chargeback which is never 100% removed anyways.