What steps do you go through when creating accounts, and how far do you allow your billing system to take it?

Ex: Do you have your billing system automatically check fraud by phone/fraudguardian and set up the account, have you check it, or what?

How much of the proccess is done automatically and how much is done by hand?

Is there any difference between what you do with current and new customers?

I'm using ModernBill, me or one of my tech staff check all orders as they are processed, although processing is automatic, processing is emailed to us as it happens so we can check it. And yes, we dont check every payment from current customers as we also have fraudguardian check them

Some of the client management / billing software comes with fraud checking software. For example, I know modernbill has the fraud guardian module and client exec has the maxmind module.

How these modules ussaly work is that it gives each attempted signup a score rating based on Geographical IP address location checking, Proxy Detection, E-mail Checks, Address and Phone Number Checks, and ssuing Bank BIN Number Checks.

If the score is above a certain preset value the order will be denied until you are your stuff checks it out.

Or you could use "Autohost".. not used but seems GOOD :-)

I have all accounts manually checked and created to minimise fraud, even automatic fraud scan systems can be fooled

I am going to be using ModernBill to bill and manage my clients.

As far as setting up the actual accounts go, ModernBill has some general built-in fraud detection features for orders. All of my orders are moderated (meaning we need to manually approve them). -- Basically when someone places an order on our website, we see it in Modern Bill and then call the client and verify there

First and Last Name
Billing/Contact Address
Contact E-Mail Address
Final 4 Digits on Credit Card


If all of the information is successfully verify ed, we will then activate the account right there on the phone and let the client know that the login information will be sent to there e-mail account. If the call cannot verify the information, we will contact the person using the details that were used during sign up, and let them know that someone was using there information. If they are not aware of that, we will completely delete the order (refunding all payments).

We let the accounts auto-create, but then have someone call the customer and verify their signup and confirm their address.

No problems have arised from this method so far (and no fraud has gone through our phone verify). If we can't verify via phone, we email them and/or close their account.

How large of a purchase would be a candidate for a request for asking for a copy of photo id or the credit card?

Also, do you ask for copy of id for anyything like ssh access (not going to be offered but for an example). And do you have to ask for it on ssl certificates, or is that taken care of by the company you are reselling the certificates for?

Be careful with customers. My friend's friend used to host client. They started to do scams and frauds with payment. Ends up that my friend's friend got his account banned for "suspicous activity" and "credit card fraud".

Just be sure that you don't get in trouble yourself.