preCharge Announces Holiday Fraud Prevention Tips for Online Merchants

Industry: Internet & Online

Press Release Summary: Fraud rates will triple this holiday season to nearly $50 billion with online merchants covering nearly 100% of the cost. “While consumers have banks looking out for them, who’s looking out for legitimate online retailers?” asks Howard Schecter, Regional Sales Manager for preCharge Risk Management Solutions.

Press Release Body: To assist online merchants, and in association with some of the industry’s most prominent experts, such as Merchant911, preCharge announces its Top Ten Fraud Prevention Tips for Online Retailers:

1) Address Verification Service (AVS) and Card Verification Value Code (CVV/CV2) matches alone will not protect merchants. Most banks do not honor a valid match as a merchant dispute for a chargeback, and a CVV/CV2 number is just as easy to steal as the billing address.

2) Collect the Internet Protocol (IP) address of your visitors. The IP address is invaluable for tracking fraud. www.arin.net can tell you the company that an IP address is registered to and the country itself.

3) If you can't verify an order and your instinct tells you not to accept it, then don't. While rejecting a valid order certainly isn’t a good thing, a chargeback is worse.

4) Require an adult signature upon delivery, even if a customer requests otherwise.

5) UPS and FedEx offer change in shipping notifications free of charge. Fraudsters often ship packages to a legitimate address, getting AVS match and bank verification, only to re-route the package in transit. Notifications known as “exception reports” can be sent via email and are invaluable to stopping packages from ending up in a fraudster’s hands.

6) When in doubt, require two credit cards for verification. A scammer with one stolen card is common, a scammer with two cards from the same cardholder is rare.

7) Search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, can aide in your screening process. Search for the customer name, phone number and IP addresses. Fraudsters can often be found online, referenced in forums and directories.

8) Most counties now have property records online. Try searching housing records to validate the customer’s residency.

9) Include your policies and customer service information with every shipment and make your return policy easy to understand.

10) Confirm your merchant account descriptor (the name and phone number your customers see) is correct. A customer’s inability to contact you can result in bad public relations and even chargebacks. Test a $1.00 charge to your personal credit card; never assume that the information is correct.

preCharge Risk Management Solutions (www.precharge.com) is a global leader in chargeback and fraud prevention services. With a network spanning nearly 200 countries and billions of data points, preCharge maintains the largest fraud database in the world, providing merchants with the resources to do more business globally.

Contact your merchant service provider and ask how adding preCharge to your merchant account can help your business, or call preCharge at (212) 751-6213.

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Web Site: https://www.precharge.com/

Contact Details: Contact: Howard Schecter
Telephone: (212) 751-6213
Fax: (212) 689-4999
Email: hschecter@precharge.com