What do you guys do... I've got some people so determined to buy from my site that they go through more than one card and reattempt multiple times but authoirze.net is not letting any of the transactions through because there is no AVS for their cards (ex. this guy in Australia this morning).

Should I be screening out most of the non-US for apparently not having address verification?

Safe? No. Should you accept some without address verification? That's your call.

There will be the occasional customer that is valid that will fail the address verification, however, there are a lot more that are trying to find that loophole and rip you off. If you are going to accept those orders, I would at least verify some information before processing it. Require them to include a phone number that you can contact them on. You can either call them (the safest way) or do a phone number check to see if that number matches the name. Non-US orders are tricky because of this issue, so you need to be careful. The few e-commerce clients that I have worked with do have an AVS that they use and do not ship outside the US unless verified thoroughly. Not requiring the address verification can lead to more orders, but if they end up being fraudulent, you will be the one to lose out ... so it may not be worth the risk.

Simple answer... NO. AVS is a critical fraud verification tool for orders in the US. I don't think it works outside the us though, so we have to double check every International order...

The problem is I can't take any orders from most non-US people in the first place. It's like saying if you're not American you can't buy at my site, and I don't really like that. They all seem to come up as "AVS not available for cardholder" or similar which gets rejected since AVS is turned on. I don't want to turn it off if it means a lot of fraud though. I was hoping there's some middle position that others take.

You should be able to set your software to only notify you that AVS failed, not reject the order. As I said, we use AVS and have to find other ways to verify non-US orders as it comes back "AVS not available."

There is another value, CVV2, that is the 3-digit number on the back of the card. We require that as well, and it must match.

Another important consideration - a lot of CC processors will charge you higher in discount rates if you do not attempt to do the AVS. And as Brandon pointed out, check with the gateway on how to handle when the AVS fails.

I don't require AVS for international orders, because like you said, I'd have to reject almost everyone.

Its simply a matter of selecting not to reject a transaction with AVS is not available.

I also only do zip code verification. People can sometimes type their street in wrong and it was a headache.

I've had over $200k in revenue through a.net so far and not a single chargeback. I had one person try, but all they had to do was ask for a refund and I would have given them one (pissed me off that they never bothered to contact me), so I gave them a refund when I got the initial chargeback notice.

Thanks for sharing your experience Chris. I've pushed back my settings further, and also just learned the meaning of the "AVS not applicable" error is that the bank declined the card not AVS (in this morning's case due to the card being expired). Either way I hope to accept more transactions; I hate seeing people hitting the auth net page 4 or 5 times then leaving.

"Verified" non-US PayPal users have gone through a credit card confirmation process which involves accessing their statement to find a 4 digit code.

Neat. I accept both paypal and credit cards directly on my site, split is about 40/60. I'm not really worried about the paypal as much as the CC

All the advise on the safety issue is correct. And as Corey pointed out, most CC processors will charge you a higher rate when you don't use AVS. Rates are based on risk and when you don't or can't verify the address the risk of a chargeback is higher and as such so is the rate.

You can accept international transactions without the fear of fraud AND lower your interchange (discount) rate on your transactions by enabling Verified by Visa, MasterCard SecureCode and JCB's J/Secure.

All three programs are worldwide offerings. Merchants who implement the initiatives typically see a 65%-70% drop in the number of chargebacks they receive, and are able to reduce both their chargeback fees, and the operational overhead costs of preventing and dealing with chargebacks.

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You can learn more about the three programs and their specific benefits on our site, www.cardinalcommerce.com.