Retail Blog

Fraud hurts. It hurts the victim and it hurts the retailer. Investing in expensive software can help prevent credit card fraud, but simple rules of thumb are free and can make a difference as well.

• Most fraud occurs on orders with values over $300.
• Most fraud occurs for items with high “street value”, such as digital cameras, MP3 players, metal detectors, and GPS devices.
• Different ship to/bill to addresses, specifically with different last names.
• CVV (Card Verification Value) failure.
• AVS (Address Verification System) failure. Typos happen, so watch for scenarios where BOTH the zip code and the shipping address have errors.
• Free email accounts, specifically Hotmail and Yahoo, with different names than are on the bill to address.
• Orders that include multiple identical items.
• Express shipping to popular gateway ports to South America and the Caribbean, including New York; Doral, Hialeah, and NW Miami, FL; and El Paso, Laredo, and Brownsville, TX.
• Phone numbers where the area code does not match the bill to address.

Obviously none of the above points are conclusive. Be careful not to offend customers, but watch your orders and try to avoid credit card fraud before it bites you in the margin.