Many declined CCs

[Dan Grossman]

Perhaps those with more experience can tell me if it's normal to see many declined credit cards on a site? I've processed a number of successful transactions in the past two days of both visa and mastercards, and tested all my own cards, but I've got 5 declines in the past day of others' cards due to everything from "Address Info not available for Cardholder (U)" to no reason and "AVS not applicable".

I can verify that the entire address is being sent correctly to authorize.net from the transaction details... so are all these people actually entering the wrong address for their cards?

It's a shame because these people are leaving after not being processed the first time, I guess confused about what happened or something.

Also, authorize.net told me there was an error when they went to make my first settlement, but not what the error was. E-mailed my merchant account provider about that... not a good thing.

[KLB]

One word: FRAUD!

I suspect a lot of your bad transactions are people trying to defraud you. You might also find a fair number of people trying to use a credit card (their's, their spouses or their company's) and are inputting a different address than the billing address for the credit card.

Unless you specify an alternative delivery address, many credit card companies will only approve transactions where the delivery address or address provided is the same as the billing address.

[Corey Bryant]

Yeah sounds like that they are trying to get something from you from nothing. Have not had all of those though from any of my clients. If you sell downloadable content, it is going to be higher because once they get the software, etc there is not too much you can do.

Thanks for pointing out another problem with authorizenet.com. Just something else to add against them.

[aspen]

I get alot of declined transactions. Usually due to AVS rejections. Sometimes just outright declines.

One thing to check: Is your server time accurate? If it starts to lag then some transactions will pass the authorize.net 5 minute cutoff and be declined.

I changed some of the error messages on my site so that if someone's card is rejected it says "This is probably because you entered an incorrect billing address." That helped. Whereas people before would keep trying after being rejected (and keep failing). Now I often see someone get rejected, and then accepted, on their second try.

Then of course they call me and complain about being charged twice because the genius customer service rep at their bank doesn't realize that when a card is authorized against and then rejected by AVS the funds are still put on hold and it is a hold done by the bank not a charge done by the merchant. So atleast every other day I have to explain to someone how credit card processing works.

[Dan Grossman]

Well, makes sense. I decided to try to check out and mistype my zip so it'd be declined and I'd see if an error message was being printed so I could edit the template for that, but instead authnet authorized the charge on my card despite the zip mismatch.

That's awfully lenient, all of a sudden. Now all you need is a street address to pass AVS. I didn't even use my full name but just "Dan", so I guess it also doesn't require the name on card field to be complete. Tried it again with "name on card: Testing Authnet" and it was accepted again. That's crazy. Why not pass the name typed in 'name on card' as the billing name?

After enough trying (and completely changing the address) I finally got the transaction declined so I could find where the error message was being put; it was in the URI but not on the page, so I added a message about the card being declined and to check that the billing address matches and such on the page, so the customer is aware of why they're back at the payment page.

[aspen]

Credit Cards don't do name verification (it was a big suprise to me too).

As far as addresses... you control that. You can reject if they mess up the zip code, street address, both, one or the other. Whatever. Look under "Settings" after logging in.

Then there are a bunch of different codes listed when there is an avs rejection. You can refer back to the avs settings page to learn what those mean.

[Corey Bryant]

Aspen is correct. They only do AVS - and even then it is only the numbers. It only looks at the 123 in 123 Main st, not Main St or anything like that. Another good thing now is Verified by Visa.

[Dan Grossman]

I didn't realize I could change the AVS settings until Aspen suggested it. I went in and turned off decline for non-US banks (I'll take a little risk for the customers that have been contacting me about not having paypal in their country), and turned on decline for non-matching zip.

[Xia]

Sorry to bring this topic back up, but I had just decided to order <X> from website <X> today, and surprise surprise, my credit card was rejected. I emailed the owner of the site and he said that my credit card didn't support address verification. It is a MasterCard issued in Belgium, is this a common issue? Can I enable address verification for my card?

So, my hunch is, Dan, that it's not fraud, but more people like me, anyone in Europe who knows more about this address verification?

[Dan Grossman]

In order to accept cards not issued by US banks I had to enable that option in my gateway, it wasn't by default, so a card like yours would always fail AVS. That's probably why your card got rejected. I have it enabled, which lets more credit cards through, and I haven't had any chargebacks yet.

I still get a lot of declined transactions, but now that I've added error messages most of those people fix their address and send it through again and it accepts.

[Corey Bryant]

Well not too sure about the postcode over there, but AVS uses the street number in the street address & the US Zip code for comparison. Unfortunately, AVS does not even work for Canadian mail addresses either.

[jaiem]

Never had trouble putting through an overseas CC, though we won't take CC orders from some areas we feel are too risky in terms of fraud.

As for AVS, not eveyone is bright enough to put down thier proper billing address. IOW, if someone is ordering and wants it sent to thier work place they may put thier work place address in for both shipping and billing even though it isn't the billing address.

[Dan Grossman]

Except I sell only web services, so there is no shipping address and people still don't get their address right... :P

[Corey Bryant]

Well not shipping but billing address.

[aspen]

Sorry to bring this topic back up, but I had just decided to order <X> from website <X> today, and surprise surprise, my credit card was rejected. I emailed the owner of the site and he said that my credit card didn't support address verification. It is a MasterCard issued in Belgium, is this a common issue? Can I enable address verification for my card?

So, my hunch is, Dan, that it's not fraud, but more people like me, anyone in Europe who knows more about this address verification?

Some non-US countries offer it, I sometimes see a VS/MC from Europe that has it, but not often.

However, I'm pretty sure American Express has global AVS. So if you want to make an order from a merchant that requires it get an AMEX card.

[Dan Grossman]

AMEX just put me on their no recourse program, guess they consider my biz high risk. Means I can't dispute chargebacks. Oh well.

[v.Richard]

I have it enabled, which lets more credit cards through, and I haven't had any chargebacks yet.

The average time between a fraudulent charge and chargeback to the merchant is probably close to 3 months. A chargeback can come up to 6 months after the charge was made. My guess is that few chargebacks make it earlier than 2 months after original transaction.

Some card issuers outside USA do support AVS - but many do not.

Requiring AVS match (where available) and CVV match (many more foreign issuers support CVV as compared to AVS) may reduce fraud -> chargebacks, but that's only a beginning to effective fraud control - the serious carders have an almost unlimited supply of valid cards with AVS/CVV through such schemes as fake sites that look like the real thing promoted by e-mail requesting user to "re-validate" their account info....
Failing to get more serious about fraud can result in a B I G hit, because you'll lose not only the original charge, plus the original transaction fees - nearly all processors also hit you with a chargeback fee that ranges from $5 - $25. If you're selling low-ticket items, 1 chargeback can effectively cancel many many good sales.

[rex_b]

Dan Grossman

you link doesn't work in your sig. Send me a PM

[Kakki]

authorizenet has the merchant set the way the cards are using AVS or not and if so, to what degree. Log into your account on authorizenet and click in settings, AVS. see the different choices and you can tell them to decline if the zip doesn't match or if the zip AND the street address doesn't match, etc.

[Dan Grossman]

Dan Grossman

you link doesn't work in your sig. Send me a PM

The server was down for about 15 minutes this morning. What did you want to contact me about?

[aspen]

AMEX just put me on their no recourse program, guess they consider my biz high risk. Means I can't dispute chargebacks. Oh well.

That BS program is for all online merchants.

[Kakki]

That BS program is for all online merchants.

not me....I've been an online merchant for over 5 years and have a great relationship with AMEX, DISC, MC, VI. I think high risk areas are affected, long standing, low risk merchants aren't.

It takes time to establish a good credit rating as a merchant. (Yes, merchants are rated just like consumers. Have too many declines, too many chargebacks, etc...your rating is affected.)

[aspen]

I called them to complain about it and they said that it applies to everyone who sells through a website. Perhaps they simply do not know that you do.

[Corey Bryant]

That BS program is for all online merchants.

Maybe they should think of another name for it?

[Kakki]

I called them to complain about it and they said that it applies to everyone who sells through a website. Perhaps they simply do not know that you do.

Of course they know...its the only place I sell. It was in my application back in 1999, my renewed contract since then.