Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Running a Web Hosting Business : Credit Card AVS Question

[Marty]

I have a new merchant account set up with Authorize.net as the gateway. Within the merchant menu, I can elect to have transactions rejected based on Address Verification System (AVS) results. Here are the options:

A Street Address: Match -- First 5 Digits of Zip: No Match
B Address Information Not Provided for AVS Check
E AVS Error
G Non U.S. Card Issuing Bank
N Street Address: No Match -- First 5 Digits of Zip: No Match
R Retry, System Is Unavailable
S AVS Not Supported by Card Issuing Bank
U Address Information For This Cardholder Is Unavailable
W Street Address: No Match -- All 9 Digits of Zip: Match
X Street Address: Match -- All 9 Digits of Zip: Match
Y Street Address: Match -- First 5 Digits of Zip: Match
Z Street Address: No Match -- First 5 Digits of Zip: Match

I am looking for advice on which ones I should choose to have rejected. Any help from others that use Authorize.net or similar systems would be appreciated. I want to do what I can to prevent fraud while not frustrating legitimate customers.

Or would it make more since to accept all, and then evaluate each transaction individually before the funds are actually captured. Then I could void them manually.
Thanks

[Paul_Szymanski]

Marty,

We use authorize.net and we have the following checked:

A, N, W, Z

Remember that all the AVS is checking in the address is the numbers. Therefore, many times people from a foreign country from where the card is sissued will use a fake street address from there country to fool the AVS system.

I will check to make sure those are the ones I have checked for you.

I really like authorize.net and we recently just addded Discover to the cards we process.

Good luck with the new merchant account.

[Marty]

Thanks, Paul.

Let me know after you check. I would be interested in knowing what works for others.

[Marcus]

Master card states clearly on their website that AVS is free for all merchants who accept mastercard. Now i am wondering whether this applies to Non Us merchants as well, spoke with our bank and they didn't have a clue what i was talking about.

[ID2000]

We have a merchant account and we accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover. When billing a NON-US customer the AVS system is null and void. Are we the only ones with this or does someone else have a merchant account that their AVS system works for NON-US customers???

[Travis]

As far as I know, AVS only works for U.S. customers.