With the rise in usage and importance of credit cards across numerous industries, an unfortunate parallel reality is the rise in credit card fraud over recent years. For many businesses, particularly smaller ones, even a single major instance of credit card fraud can threaten growth and create major financial issues.
At Merchant Card Advisors, we’re proud to offer credit card processing services for a variety of businesses, including detailed security features that help protect your business from the potential for credit card fraud. In addition to these areas, here are some basic tips we can offer on how to train yourself and your staff on proper processes for accepting and verifying credit card payments to avoid fraud risks altogether.
Information to Require
In particular, the chances of credit card fraud increase significantly when the card itself is not physically present – such as in a phone or E-commerce purchase situation, each of which are more and more common in recent years. With this in mind, you should be automatically requiring several important pieces of information from any client looking to make a purchase through this format:
- Name of the cardholder
- Card number and expiration date
- Card Verification Value – also abbreviated CVV, this is the three- or four-digit number on the back of the card (or on the front in the case of certain providers, such as American Express).
- Billing address and ship-to address, particularly if these differ
There’s no need to do this in any particular order, but each of these areas need to be verified for any online or phone payment. This is especially true in the case of any larger purchase, for which you can set up specific notification and verification methods using our processing systems.
Double-Checking Location Concerns
If you notice anything is off with the above areas, such as if the shipping and billing address are located far apart or even in different countries, you should slow the process down and double-check a few things. For starters, investigate the possible reasons why the billing and shipping addresses are not the same – particularly if this is the case across two different countries, but even if not, this is often a red flag of a fraud attempt, but there are also legitimate reasons why this might be the case.
In addition, consider checking the IP address of the payment in cases of online payment. For phone payments, technology allows you to do the same kind of location checking. This will help you clarify any location-related areas.
Staff Training and Processes
Ensuring your staff is well-trained on the above, plus on the basic steps and processes associated with any card processing areas, is vital. Ensure they understand what qualifies as a big order where they should check for additional payment details, and that they know how to check for card declines or other issues. Empower them to take the proper action if there are suspicious factors at play, whether this means contacting a superior within your company or taking action with the card’s issuing bank.
For more on avoiding credit card fraud risks, or to learn about any of our credit processing services, speak to the staff at Merchant Card Advisors today.
