What is Address Verification Service (AVS)?
Address Verification Service (AVS) is a risk management tool for merchant account holders who accept credit card transactions when neither the card nor the cardholder are present, or when the card is present but its magnetic stripe cannot be read by a terminal at the point of sale. Provided by the major card associations, AVS helps reduce the risk of fraudulent transactions by verifying the cardholder’s billing address on file at the card issuer. Merchant account holders submit the AVS request through the processor directly to the specific credit card association during credit card processing for address comparison.
Address Verification Service (AVS) is a fraud prevention service that validates a cardholder’s address (provided during a transaction) against the card issuer’s records. This service is normally required as part of a credit card authorization for mail order/telephone order/Internet transactions. A code is returned with the authorization result that indicates the level of accuracy of the address match and helps secure the most favorable interchange rates. Note that if AVS returns a “no match” result, it is up to the merchant to decline the transaction, it is not stopped automatically by ECHO.
AVS is a credit card fraud prevention tool that provides mail order and electronic commerce merchants with the means to verify the key components of the consumer’s billing and shipping addresses against the addresses that the Visa and MasterCard issuer has on record for that consumer. AVS is currently available for U.S. merchants only. An “Address Verification Service” (AVS) is performed by the Payment Processor every time an authorization is processed. It compares the first 9 characters of the street address and the zip code given with the street address and zip code recorded as the customer’s billing address and zip code held on file. A status small group of indicators is returned indicating the success or failure of the address and zip. These checks are used to verify that the person making the purchase is a legitimate card user. Some merchants only use zip code because it can be very difficult to EXACTLY match a street address. In our case, only the first nine characters are checke
Address Verification Service’ is a service that is built into the authorization process to alert the merchant to potentially fraudulent transactions. The numerical portion of a consumer’s street address as well as his zip code is sent along with the transaction data and is matched against the address that is registered with the consumer’s credit card from their issuer’s bank. A response code is sent back with a code that indicates a match, partial match or complete mismatch. this information is simply reported back to the merchant and does not, in and of itself, result in a transaction being declined. The merchant then has the option to contact the customer to confirm the correct address before deciding whether or not they want to ship any goods.
