The banking industry introduced AVS and CV2 a few years ago to help combat the growing problems with verifying the shopper during a CNP transaction (Cardholder Not Present).

AVS and CV2 checking is an electronic notification service that is provided by most card issuers. The AVS and CV2 can be carried out on all ecommerce or VSP Terminal (MOTO) transactions placed through your Protx account.

The Protx REPEAT transaction (payment) type are exempt as the card's CV2 number is not stored, for security reasons, and is therefore unable to be checked.

The aim of these security checks is to provide additional information on each transaction which arms you, the vendor, with information to reduce the risk of fraudulent transactions.

Benefits

Quick Results: AVS and CV2 are carried out in real-time, so you receive the results at the same time as the authorisation result.

AVS and CV2 provide more information about the transaction: AVS and CV2 provide you with more information about the transaction so that you can quickly decide whether or not you need to carry out any further fraud screening checks.

Failed AVS and CV2 are early fraud indicators: A failed or partially failed AVS and CV2 result is often an early indication that the order may be fraudulent which can save you from carrying out longer manual checks.

Detailed responses limit errors: Protx break down the results of AVS and CV2 into three categories to cut down on the number of failed results due to customer error.

Automatic fraud screening: You can set up a rule base on your Protx account to automatically accept or reject transactions based on the results of the AVS and CV2 checks to avoid repetition to save you from manually checking the results of every transaction.

Limitations

AVS is a UK scheme only: It is not possible to check AVS on overseas orders, so you should expect your overseas orders to return with a 'CV2 Match Only' result.

Only the numerics of the AVS are checked: The non-numerical characters in the billing address and post code are not checked as part of the AVS checks. This means that it is possible to receive a false negative result if a shopper does not enter a house number, i.e. The shopper has entered a house name.

Unable to check AVS/CV2 on company cards: If you accept company credit cards, it may be that the results you receive for the AVS/CV2 is 'DATA NOT CHECKED'. This may be because the banks do not have access to this specific information in order to check it.

As described above, both of these measures greatly reduce the risk of fraud from stolen card numbers, such as from carelessly disposed of receipts, which is one of the most common methods of online fraud.

AVS and CV2 checks are automatically set up on your account by default. So when you receive your first 'live' transaction you will be able to see instant results of the checks.

N.B: when your account is in the test mode, you will always see an 'all match' on the AVS and CV2. This is because during testing the transactions are never forwarded to the acquiring banks for authorisation, and hence there are no AVS/CV2 checks.

Should you wish to de-activate this service from your account, you can login to your VSP Admin area as the main administrator user. Go to account parameters where you will see AVS/CV2 Fraud checking options, and from here you can switch AVS/CV2 on or off.

Or alternatively please send an email to our support team stating your vendor name requesting that you wish to stop using this service.

You will get 1 of 5 responses from the card issuer for each transaction successfully processed:

ALL DATA MATCH: Both the address (Adr), Postcode (PC) and security code matched.

SECURITY CODE MATCH ONLY: The address (Adr) and Postcode (PC) did not match.

ADDRESS MATCH ONLY: The security code did not match (CV2).

NO DATA MATCHES: Neither the address, (Adr) Postcode (PC) or security code matched (CV2).

DATA NOT CHECKED: The card issuer have not been able to check the data.

You can then make a decision as to any follow-up action you feel may be appropriate, such as doing further manual checks with the shopper for orders over a certain value.

This example screen shot shows how you would see the results within your VSP Admin area.

As you can see from the image, the results are shown with a 'green' tick . If there is a match on the CV2 and AVS you will see an 'all data match' in the fraud results (three green ticks). If there is not a match then you will see a red cross. When the bank has not been able to check the AVS and CV2 you will see a question mark symbol. The AVS is actually split into two results; you can see this from the screen shot, PC and Adr. PC stands for postcode and Adr stands for address.

As well as the results being available to view within your VSP admin area, you will also receive the results from Protx within the transaction response POST should you wish to capture this information and store in your database/display on your website for your shopper to see. For more information on this, please review the integration and protocol guidelines which can be downloaded here

When a transaction takes place, you cannot always guarantee that you will see an 'all data match' back from the card issuer. When this happens you will see either a;

                         amber question mark   OR   red cross .


If you do see the amber question mark in the results this means that the bank has not been able to check the details of the transaction. Possible reasons for this are:

•   UK Card Issuers do not check foreign addresses.



•   UK Card Issuers are not always able to check the AVS & CV2 data sent, so the response again   will be represented with the amber question mark.

If you are seeing a red cross this is because the card details have not matched with what the banks have on their records. The following reasons for this could be:

•   Shoppers often type the wrong address, i.e. delivery address rather than the billing   address or Top flat instead of flat 10.



•   Shoppers may have moved and not changed the registered address with their   bank but has entered their new address details on the payment page.



•   Shopper details are incorrect.

If a transaction does not come back with all green ticks you may want to consider: calling up and verifying the shopper before shipping the goods.

Yes you can, by applying an AVS/CV2 rule base. See our Rule Base guide for details on how to apply this.

An online reversal is simply the ability to reverse / cancel a transaction after the card issuer have authorised the card.

What this means is that you can set up a rule base to stop a transaction that does not meet the criteria you have set up.

When the transaction is rejected, the transaction will be listed as "Failed" and the shoppers will be informed on their screen and redirected back to your website.

N.B: AMEX and JCB cards cannot have a rule base set up for them. This is because AMEX and JCB do not accept online reversals.

Diners Club do accept online reversals so it is possible to set up a rule base for this card type.

Please see our Rule Base section for further information.

The AVS and CV2 are both automatically checked together by the card issuer and currently, there is no way to check these independently from each other. If the shopper does not have a numeric address, it is likely that this will be returned as a 'NOT MATCHED' result.

Whilst CV2 checks are available for all transactions, the address check is limited to UK residents only. What this means is that for non-UK orders the check will always return a failure. However, you should expect the CV2 value to be correct as the CV2 is always checked. So you will need to be extra stringent and treat overseas transactions (with caution). Please be aware that if you have rules set up and take overseas orders, the rule base may decline the transaction. Please see our Rule Base section for more information.

On most occasions the CV2 value on a card can be checked for international transactions.