What does AVS stand for?
Address Verification Services. This is a tool for merchants to reduce the risk associated with non-face-to-face transactions, such as mail order or telephone order sales by keying in the numerical portion of the customers billing address and zip code. By using Address Verification Services, a transaction qualifies for a lower rate as compared to not using the service. This is an industry standard regulation.
The LinkPoint Secure Payment Gateway gives you Address Verification System (AVS) codes to help protect you from costly chargebacks and fraud. Whenever you perform a credit card Sale or Authorize Only transaction, the Gateway verifies the customer’s address you entered on the Point of Sale page against the address that the card-issuing bank has on file for the customer. The AVS code tells you how well the two addresses match. If the transaction is approved, you will find the 3-digit alphabetic AVS code in the Approval Code (following the approval number and the reference number) on your Transaction Result page. A typical transaction result code might look like this. The AVS code is highlighted. 0097820000019564:YNAM:12345678901234567890123: AVS compares the numeric portion of the street address and the zip code. If both the zip code and street address match, the 3-digit AVS code will begin with a Y. If they do not match, the AVS code will begin with an N.
