What is Address Verification Service?

 

When it comes to online transaction security, a credit card address verification service is an essential part of the process. It verifies that the billing address submitted by the customer is the same as that on file with their credit card issuer. This helps limit fraud and charge-backs.

AVS is a fraud prevention tool used by credit card processors, issuing banks and ecommerce businesses. It compares the submitted address to the address on record with the cardholder’s bank and sends back a response of Y, N or X.

An X or N indicates that the address does not match and may indicate fraud. Typically, this would mean that a person who did not make the purchase has stolen the credit card. Merchants can choose to decline the transaction if this is not what they expect or request additional information from the customer to confirm their identity.

The best address validation services include fuzzy matching that allows the service to recognize common typos and errors like misspellings, abbreviations, switched letters and more. This way, the service can standardize the addresses and make sure they are mail-ready. This saves the customers a lot of time and effort as well as reduces data entry mistakes.

Another great feature of these services is that they are CASS certified, meaning they meet all the USPS postal requirements and offer huge postal discounts. This makes them the ideal choice for organizations and companies that need to verify and validate their address lists. This helps them to reduce the number of rejected transactions and improve their customer experience and also boosts response rates from marketing campaigns.