Welcome to this help center guide to enabling some security features to protect against charge-backs. By default, accounts should have CVV and AVS enabled for transactions to authorize, but this guide will show you how to confirm and change if necessary.
Fraudulent charge-backs (customers using stolen credit cards) are hard to protect against - enabling CVV and AVS ensures that the customer needs to have all of the relevant information in order to authorize a card. This will not guarantee that a fraudulent individual cannot make a transaction - if they have all of the needed information, then the transaction will authorize - but it will help reduce the amount of successful fraudulent transactions.
As always, any action you take to protect against charge backs, will negatively effect honest customers - particularly corporate accounts which have multiple business addresses. So please bear in mind, that enabling full AVS will likely increase the amount of declines you receive in general, not just fraudulent ones.
CVV - Card verification value - Is the 3 or 4 digit security code on the physical card. Providing the CVV is viewed as confirmation that the customer has the physical card, or at least knows the full card details
AVS - Address verification service - is a tool provided by credit card processors and issuing banks in order to help detect suspicious credit card transactions and reduce fraud. The AVS validates the billing address associated with the card.
How to enable CVV and AVS in cardpointe
- Click administration in the top bar of the Cardpointe desktop application
- Click the Security tab
- Within the "CVV/AVS" section, check the box next to the desired validations that you wish to activate
- CVV (Card Verification Value) - When active, CVV mismatches are automatically declined.
- AVS (Address Verification System) - When active, AVS mismatches are automatically declined.
- When finished, click Save.