Why is AVS important?
AVS (or Address Verification Service) is one of the easiest ways to add legitimacy to any card-not-present sale. You can get a real-time address check through your payment gateway.
Using the AVS system is one of the best ways to combat fraud in a card-not-present environment. As the merchant, you request the customer's billing address with the sale. Then, in the background, your payment gateway will compare the customer's supplied information with what the issuing bank has on file for the card being authorized. If there's a mismatch, you get an immediate notification and you can choose what happens next, automatically. Your gateway will allow you to automatically decline the sale, review it for accuracy, or if you choose, you can still process it.
The benefits to the AVS system are two-fold:
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Enhanced fraud protection. You can avoid costly chargebacks or deceptive customers by simply declining a sale with an AVS mismatch.
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Lower interchange rates! The card associations reward merchants who engage in fraud mitigation with lower rates. So every time you check the address, you're actively getting lower rates on the sale.
AND highly recommends always checking AVS information on every sale as a matter of habit. It'll protect you and save you money! There really isn't a great reason to not check AVS.
We're serious about saving money.
AND is dedicated to getting your processing rates as close to zero as possible. We utilize membership pricing along with cash discounting and surcharging programs to maximize savings. Let our analysts review your statements and see how much money we can put back in your pockets.