UK site accepting EU/US business - Fraud prevention

Hi

We have a UK based jewellery ecommerce site with a UK bank merchant account.

We would like to expand and accept US and EU clients, however, as our biz is a magnet to a high level of attempted fraud, we need to implemet stringent Fraud prevention measures.

In the UK we have the usual Adress Verification and CV2 checks. Our payment procerssors say that they cannot offer the same services for non UK transactions.

Is there a simple solution to this?
Can we implement Address verification checks through 3rd parties?
Are there any other useful fraud prevention measures that you can suggest?

Many thanks in advance!

 

I'm facing the same and the best solution I found is to accept international orders by Bank Transfer only or if they can back it up with faxed utility bills etc. accept PayPal transfers from users verified by PayPal and where the delivery address matches their verified account address. That way it's ALWAYS going to the person who paid for it.

But that DOESN'T imply the stuff will get there. I'd only send to safe countries with reliable posties.

 

I have a UK jewellery store as well, it is a problem but you just have to avoid the likes of nigeria/marocco.

Don't offer separate shipping address for International customers.
Check address for card transaction matches delivery address manually.
Check the phone number - see it matches location.
Avoid shipping to countries that abviously wouldn't need UK expensive jewellery/nigeria
Be careful of remailing addresses, fraudsters uses addresses that are forwarders.

There are some other obvious signs:
Customer does not care about discount
Customer does not care about shipping costs, they want the FASTEST shipping method possible even if it costs more than the goods.

One other check that can be handy is email them, checking their email works! and ask for the expiry date again as "the system lost it" fraudsters often use many cards a day and don't keep a track of which card they used with your website!!

You just need to be vigilent and make sure your store takes the shoppers IP so that you know which country the order was placed.

As a general rule when taking credit card orders for Jewellery I dont complete orders to:

Romania
Indonesia
Singapore
Ghana
Ukraine
Uganda
Nigeria
Hungary
Belarus
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
Slovak Republic
Russia
Yugoslavia
Macedonia
Phillipines
Thailand
Malaysia

 

Thanks sji, some very good and useful advice there!

What puzzles me is that the fraud prevention measures are available in each individual country such the US and some EU countries, but the banks and major organization fail to provide the service to merchants globally, (even though criminals PREFER to work globally)
Surely, if the info is available (e.g. address verification) there would be a demand and therefore a commercial justification to offer this as a service accoross borders?

 

Even in his day and age some banks can be less than helpful when it comes to the internet, for international transactions we just have to be wary and vigilent.

 

I'm not sure whether it's an international effort but enquire with your PSP about verified by VISA. It might be of help to verify the actual owner is the one using the card to purchase it since it requires passwords etc. It also shifts liability to the PSP away from you.

 

My understadning is that Verified by Visa (VbV) is a voluntary scheme applicable only to those who elected to subscribe to it. Which means that it's not a powerful enough measure to prevent fraud as the vast majority of card holders and CC issuers are not subscribed to the scheme yet.
Speaking to my Bank, they say that after the roll out of the Chip and Pin scheme the Banks will concentrate on VbV (and the MasterCard equivalent).

 

Yes is voluntary but you can make it a requirement yourself to rid yourself of fraudsters.

But you're right in saying it's not a common thing yet, not many punters are using it so you could indeed be blocking out genuine customers.

PayPal seems safe enough to me for my type of goods (limited to verified and billing address being delivery). To me the delivery is more of a headache.

 

Hello everybody.
I also run a jewel store and have the same concerns as yours.
However, i use the http://www.fairtradeauthority.com and as a verified merchant i have the option to let them check any order i get for verifying the identity of the buyer. They answer me within 24 hours and so far they have suggested me not to ship to 4 buyers, which of course i haven't. You have to sign up for both the merchant membership and the pre-buying protection. If they authorize you to ship to a buyer, you get covered up to $300 against fraud. I know it's not all we would need, but so far it is the best way i have found for protecting my business a bit more.

 

Be very, very careful with accepting credit card orders with expensive stuff such as jewelry or electronics. Not even address verification is fool proof, there have been cases where phishers have got the victim's online banking login details and changed all contact information, including billing address and phone number.