Online Merchant - How to protect your company from credit card fraud

As online shopping is increasing its popularity, the incidences of fraudulent purchases also increase. In today's ecommerce world, knowing how to protect your online investment is extremely important. There are many online companies who have encountered and become credit card fraud victims every year. Hopefully our article here will help everyone to combat credit card fraud and protect your online business and your reputation!

Credit card fraud happens whenever someone obtains a victim's credit card account number and uses it to make unauthorized purchases. It can be a dishonest restaurant clerk making an extra imprint of your card, a thief who picks up a receipt you discard, someone pretending to be a telemarketer taking your order, the list goes on endless. It is absolutely critical to protect yourself and your identity.

If you are a customer, the consumer laws are usually on your side to protect you, if you report the discrepancy and file the credit card fraud dispute with your credit card company on a timely manner. However if you are a merchant, the penalty could be severe, because not only the chance of you winning a fraud dispute is slim, but also the merchandise is lost forever. Moreover, you will be black listed by major credit card companies, which will have negative impact on your future credit card processing rate, and many other fees. You may even end up being declined for online merchant services completely.

Let us begin with taking order process. When a customer purchases online, she/he will go through the checkout process, filling out the credit card info, and finally hit the submit button at the end. However when you receive an order, how do you know if a credit card being given is legitimate?

This is where your online merchant gateway service company, such as Authorize.net, etc becomes very important. Today, all online merchant gateway service providers can detect a credit card's identity by verifying the billing address of the credit card. In reality, the system will check the street numbers and the zip codes with the credit card company's record and make sure the information will match. So, you must learn to correctly co figurate the setting in your online payment gateway utility section. Services providers are different, so if you are new to this, call your service provider over the phone and have them to walk you through.

Please note there are times when your online merchant gateway service provider cannot successfully verify a card's billing address. The cards are actually good, but it could be due to a computer glitch or other unknown reasons that your systems just cannot verify. When this happens, you need to contact your merchant services provider and ask who the card's issuing bank is and their telephone number. Your service provider can usually tell who the card's issuing bank is based on the first 6 digits of the credit card numbers that you will tell them over the phone. Then contact the card issuing bank directly and speak with a representative over the phone to verify the card's billing address. We sometimes have to go through this way to approve a card.

When dealing with foreign customers, sometimes your payment gateway services provider may not have the capability to verify a foreign address. In such case, we recommend that you email the foreign customers and ask for the following documents:

1. front and back image copies of the credit card used

2. ID, such as passport or driver's license.

Be sure to send the request email politely, explaining the reason for additional info..."to protect customer's interest".

Everytime we receive foreign orders, we always ask for these two documents. Our experience tells us that foreign buyers with "true good faith" always provide the requested documents without hesitation. And then there are those, when you send the request, you never hear back from them again.

Finally, when a transaction is large (this is subjective, say for example, any order over $3,000 or whatever amount you decide) we usually require wire transfer.

We hope this tip will help out everyone who may be new to online processing and security issues. Online business is a rewarding business if you can protect yourself an your company.

About The Author:
Article provided by Frank Lee of Kejeweler.com, a distributor of wholesale handbags and fashion accessories.