I have my ecommerce store up and running along with Paypal IPN as the payment gateway. I've been testing live purchases to get an idea for how it all works, and one thing I noticed is while I need to supply my real name from my bank card, I could supply any fake address and phone number to my store and to Paypal, and the payment would go through fine.

I always thought bank/credit cards had an address tied to them, so I guess that is false? This seems like a real problem as any fraudster could give their own address along with the real name on a stolen credit card, and I dont believe there is a foolproof way to verify where someone lives in the UK.

Has anyone else had problems similar to this, and how did you get around it? :confused:

Bank / credit cards do have an address tied to them. When the credit card is being processed, the associated address is only checked if AVS (address verification service) is enabled. So you probably need to enable AVS with PayPal. This may be an option in your shopping cart.

Thanks for the reply, I almost gave up on this thread!

My shopping cart app (Cubecart) doesn't have any options related to AVS, is this something you need to enable in Paypal? As I couldnt find any options in my Paypal merchant account either.

I did a bit of searching for 'Address Verification System' and there wasnt a huge amount related to Paypal. Wikipedia seem to indicate that it's only used in the US?

AVS is only available in the U.S. And I wasn't able to find any indication that PayPal IPN supports AVS. Although some of the other PayPal's integration methods (such as Direct Payment) do support AVS.

Hmm ok fair enough, looks like I'll have to do figure out their address manually if Paypal dont give an IPN option for the UK :(

Update: Paypal have got back to my email and apparently AVS is only available for their UK customers if you have a Paypal 'business' account (I'm using a 'premier' account for my store).

I think I can upgrade to a business account, but does anyone know the main difference between premier and business? As this link (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/personal_vs_business-outside) doesn't really indicate there is a difference!

I'd ask Paypal, but I need a more rapid response ;)

why are you using PayPal,
use authorize.net or metacharge as your payment processor will help you with avs as well