Credit Card Fraud: Different Bill & Ship

[bzeltzer]

I was just curious how everyone protects themselves against fraud when the customer uses a different bill and ship address. Currently, with credit card payments, I request that they email or fax a copy of their drivers license, a utility bill or passport. I know that this is an inconvenience to the customer and that most sites don't do this but I'm not sure how else to handle it.

Thanks in advance for your responses!

[brassandsilver]

We have customers who use different billing and shipping addresses just about every day. We don't do anything different at all as long at they are domestic customers, and haven't ever had an issue with fraud that way. We do take extra verification steps for international customers who are billing and shipping to different addresses. Usually we require payment directly by wire transfer in those cases.

I do think this is an issue that depends on your products and customer demographics, though. In our case, many of our customers are purchasing gifts that they want to ship directly to the recipient. We also have a large group of clients who are interior designers, set decorators, and event planners, and so for our business shipping to different/multiple addresses is customary.

[Luxlife]

This is one area where Buyer Authentication can help. Please vote for this in the 3Dcart Feature Request. It is listed as Stop Credit Card Fraud with Buyer Authentication.

If the cart supports this, the merchant can use a gateway that supports Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode. These buyer authentication programs guarantee payment for approved transactions as long as the merchant ships the merchandise.

[kem]

We have a lot of customers with different ship to/bill to addresses. As stated previously, it has not been a problem for us. We ship domestically only.

[bzeltzer]

Thanks for your responses. I'd love to hear from some more people. I sell clothing and hardgoods that range widely in price.

[cbsteven]

This is a tough one. We have seen an increase in fraud recently with different billing/shipping addresses, where the billing address matches. I'd say 90-95% of orders with different billing/shipping addresses are legit, and 5-10% are fraud, for us.

We take it on a case by case basis. Our products range in price from $5-$1000, and some of our prices are very competitively priced, and some are at full MSRP. If someone orders something expensive at full MSRP (which they could find at a dozen other websites for the same price), with mismatched addresses, it will set off some red flags. More so if they are in entirely different states.

In these cases sometimes I will contact the customer to ask what's going on, ask why the addresses don't match. I find that if it's fraud, they simply won't be able to be contacted or won't respond to calls/emails.

Sometimes if it seems VERY questionable, I will just apologize and say that the transaction has been flagged by our processor and that the only way we can fill the order is by shipping it to a verified address.