What Anti-Fraud Measures Do You Use

Over the past number of years there has been an obvious increase in credit card fraud and identity theft.

Our policies have always tried to stay a step ahead but it seems no matter what is done the occasional fraudster manages to squeeze through, costing us a lot of money. At one some point in early 2009, it got as bad as 60% of the orders we received. It ended up eating a LOT of our time just to go through each order and verify them as best we could.

What methods do you use to fight fraud?

I'll start with some of the things we do.

- Require CVV code on the credit card
- We call the customer's telephone number and verify with them. - Verify the telephone number matches the region of the address they provide
- Require the CC issuing Bank's name and number
- We often require the customer to fax a signed credit card authorization form
- GeoIP matches location of the address in the order

Obviously the big challenge is proving that the person placing the order is the actual owner of the card. I've received the correct CVV, spoken with the customer on the phone number, had the phone number match the region... non-US so I wasn't able to verify their telephone details with the issuing bank. Had the GeoIP match and still found out it was fraud.

On a side note: Am I the only one that feels banks and those issuing credit cards need to take more responsibility for a system that's clearly broken? Even after going through the process above, it can still be fraud with a chargeback issued. In those cases, the company loses the money they made, pay a fee to the payment provider, lost time for Sales Reps and Tech Reps, and of course they lose money on hardware, electricity and bandwidth.