Credit card fraud prevention for merchants: Address Verification System (AVS)

AVS (Address Verification System) verifies the numeric portions of a cardholder’s address. There’s many reasons why this technology is not highly regarded. First off, it’s very temperamental. A recent change of address is enough to make it fail. It’s not that widespread either. The service is only available in the United States and a few European nations. Websites that participate in E-commerce rely on the system. Goods and services are often refused when the AVS comes up negative. Under those circumstances, merchants are advised to call the following numbers:

American Express 1-800-528-5200*
Discover Card 1-800-347-2000
Visa/MasterCard 1-800-228-1122

*Note that American Express is authorized to verify all international credit cards.

AVS provides many different response codes that indicate very specific discrepancies. Here are some frequent results:

A - The address matched, but the zip code did not. This is for Mastercard, Visa, and AMEX users.
Y - Address matched, but the zip code did not for a Discover card user.
B - The street address was a match, but the postal code was in the wrong format for the international user.
C - The street addresses and postal codes were formatted incorrectly.
D - The street address and postal code match for an international user.
E - There was an error.
G - The service is not supported by a non-US user.
I - Address information was not verified by the international issuer.
M - T street address and postal code match for an international user.
N - There is no match for the zip code or the address.
O - No Response was sent.
P - While the postal codes match, the street addresses cannot be verified due to inconsistencies in the formats.
R - You should retry. The system is temporarily unavailable or has timed out.
S - The server is not supported by the user.
U - The address information is unavailable.
W - The nine digit zip code matches, but the address does not.
X - This is an exact match.
Y - Both the address and the zip code match.
Z - The five-digit zip code matches, but the address does not.
0 - There is no response.

General Guidelines for fraud prevention

Credit card fraud prevention tips (researching the customer):



Precautionary Methods (from Merchant Side):