Fraud exposure Tools - Before an order comes though the web a shopping cart software owner's first line of defense is to have tools in place which will search for a number of variables, and detect red flags as they relate to potential fraud.  A company like Practice Pay Solutions offers a great software package for about 5.00 a month which is very little considering the consequences.

Fax / Email Confirmation - If an order is suspect or large it's generally a good practice to email the customer and politely ask them to fax or email a copy of their credit card. Although many thieves are now able to manufacture fake credit cards this method does add an additional layer of reassurance of the orders legitimacy.

Investigate Your Orders - All too often eCommerce store owners are so excited by large orders, that they neglect to analyze what the order really means. A great example would be an order for 10 identical notebook computers.  Perceptibly, this can be an order from a large company looking to purchase laptop computers, but it can also be a thief who is trying to capitalize on a stolen credit card.

Call Merchant Services - You know those terminal and processing fees you pay? Those fees allow your processing company to staff up on friendly customer service staff to help you. Therefore, it's important that business owners get what they pay for and use the merchant services bank to verify, inquire or simply ask for advice on questionable credit card orders.

Analyze The Bank Identification Numbers - The first 6 numbers of any credit card are the banks unique identification numbers.   The reason these numbers are important is because they can tell the merchant using them where the bank is located. To find the bank location visit All net tools and type in the 6 digits in to the Online Bin Database. If the country of the bank is different from the country where the product is supposed to be shipped to then a red flag should go off immediately. 

It goes without saying that CVV and address verification should be done, but these 4 tips will help your company root out any fraud that may slip through the cracks.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 14th, 2007 at 4:47 pm and is filed under Criteria For Shopping Cart Software, Shopping Cart Software, e-Commerce Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.