[ad_1]

If you operate a retail or ecommerce business, accepting all major credit cards and electronic checks is a required method of customer payment.

However, when you decide to accept electronic payments, business owners must also consider the potential cost of fraud.

Studies have shown both traditional and online merchants have lost billions in fraudulent transactions.

Today, technology provides proven methods for identifying and preventing fraudulent transactions.

Fraud can come in many forms.

Needless to say fraud is bad for business.

If you process a fraudulent customer order by the time you find out the credit card was stolen you have already shipped the product.

Fraudulent orders usually result in a customer credit card chargeback to your business.

Unfortunately, by that time, you have delivered and lost your product, you have lost the income from the sale and to top it all off; you will receive a chargeback fee from your credit card processor.

I’m sure we can agree there is a strong need to identify and stop a fraudulent order before you deliver your product.

Fortunately for the merchant, there are many steps and processes that can be implemented to reduce and eliminate credit card fraud.

10 WAYS TO REDUCE CUSTOMER CREDIT CARD FRAUD

1. Address Verification Service (AVS) – is a simple and easy to implement process to decrease your chances of accepting a stolen credit card.

2. Card Verification (CVV/CVV2) – is similar to AVS.

3. Use a Threshold Management Service – Threshold management allows the merchant to set parameters for the transactions they will accept.

4. Scrutinize Orders from Free email accounts – Fraudsters and thieves like to hide.

5. Scrutinize Orders with a different Ship to address than Bill to address – The thief with the stolen credit card may have the owners billing address and zip code.

6. Scrutinize International Orders / Foreign Credit Cards – If your business model requires you to ship to foreign countries you should obtain an International merchant account.

7. Understand that an Authorization Code does not mean the credit card is not stolen – An authorization code is provided when the transaction has been approved.

8. Use an Advance Fraud Protection Service – Advanced Fraud Protection services allow the merchant to block transactions by IP address, Country of Origin and other fraud filters.

9. Use a PCI Compliant Data Storage Service – Merchants who have a requirement to store the customer’s credit card data should use a PCI Compliant Data Storage Service.

10. Review and Implement PCI (Payment Card Industry Standards) Policies – Merchants can review PCI Standards online at pcisecuritystandards.org.

Fraud prevention is a necessary activity for traditional and online merchants.

Exposing your business to fraudulent transactions and high chargeback ratios is bad for business and could cause you to lose your merchant account.

Top Real-time Payment Gateway Services

1. Planetauthorize (Domestic USA and International)

2. Authorize.Net (Domestic USA)

3. PlugnPay (Domestic USA)

4. Skipjack (Domestic USA)

5. eProcessing Network (Domestic USA)

[ad_2]

Ihab Salloum