Online merchants – particularly high risk merchants and high volume merchants – are at risk for e-commerce fraud. However, if you as a merchant are fairly diligent about minor things such as reading your account statements, keeping an eye on incoming and outgoing transactions, and reviewing orders carefully, you will be able to prevent most types of fraud that a high risk merchant or high volume merchant would be susceptible to.  

Five simple ways you can prevent e-commerce fraud are: 

1. Pay attention to the order amounts coming in. It is hard not to get excited as a merchant when you see a $3,000 order come in. However, if your average order is closer to $300, maybe you should take a closer look.

2. Pay attention to contact information. Make sure the customer filled out all the information you required and filled it out correctly. Be on the lookout for suspicious addresses and phone numbers (all fives in a phone number for example, or something well-known from a song or movie such as 867-5309). You might catch something less obvious, like an area code that doesn’t match up with the provided state. If something about an order looks suspicious, contact the customer for verification. Once busted, they normally don’t put up too much of a protest. If a billing address and a shipping address don’t match up, that might be another reason to look a little closer.

3. If your credit card processor offers an address-verification service, make use of it. Most merchant account providers have address verification services – ensuring that the address put into your system by the customer matches the address the bank issuing the credit card has on file. If the addresses do not match up, the credit card processor alerts you. However, it is usually up to you as the merchant to contact the customer.

4. Request the credit card verification number. Just the card number, name, and expiration date may not be enough to verify a card. One piece of information that sometimes proves more elusive to credit card scammers is the card verification number. This is the three-digit number on the back of the card (it is the four-digit standalone number on the front of an American Express card.) This number will not appear in photocopies or if someone has only seen the front of the card. It would be hard to get hold of unless the scammer had stolen the physical card itself. Obviously, requiring a credit card verification number is not foolproof and can be gotten around, but it may help prevent the more amateur of scammers.

5. Make your no-tolerance policies known. Post visible warnings on your site that you monitor transactions and may contact customers for additional information if necessary. Make it clear that you will prosecute scammers to the fullest extent of the law. Add third-party security ads to your checkout pages to let them know that you have systems in place. This method may not deter everyone, but it will force more than a few would-be scammers to chicken out for fear of punishment.

High Risk Processor represents 20+ different processing sources including domestic and offshore banks, Third-Party Processors, ACH Processors, and more. We will work with you to find the most safe and secure credit card processing solutions for your high-risk or high-volume business. Let our staff of processing industry veterans find the solution that's right for you.