Enforcing the AVS check...

[EdHarrison]

I wonder what the opinion on enforcing the AVS check in AP for ecommerce payments is, I cant decide if this will alienate genuine customers?

One company I know of now enforces the 3D secure too, my own customer base is generally middle aged and above so I like to keep things simple but the fear of fraud is ever present.

[cbarling]

I would be interested in other opinions but the Actinic view is that AVS check should not be enforced as it tends to fail in up to 40% of cases.

So if you enforce it you will reject a lot of good orders. Rather, you should use The 3rd Man score.

Chris

[leehack]

I concur with Chris, the failure stats on this are too high to be used as a benchmark for anything IMO.

[Mike Hughes]

I'd agree as well. The AVS check is too blunt a tool to work well in practice. AP has 3rd man scores and that's a far more accurate and usable tool.

Mike

[EdHarrison]

I was just thinking of the post code part as the house number is very risky with house names and so on.

I do use third man but as in other threads it badly needs some attention to make it faster and accessible, the auto fraud status check box only implements it when it feels like it..

[Mike Hughes]

I'd say that even just postcode validation is a bit strict. I'm sure you'd get lots of rejected payments that then need to be followed up and verified. If it was that easy there'd be no need for the 3rd man service.

At the end of the day though it's your business and what you do will depend on your objectives. If you have a lot of fraud and want to limit deliveries to the registered card address then you can try it and see how many payment failures you get and whether it's workable or not. The good thing is that you can try it and change back if you find it just causes too many problems. So there's not much risk in giving it a try and seeing what happens.

Mike