Hotel Fraud Prevention: Address Verification Services (AVS)

Capturing credit card authorizations online isn’t just convenient for you and your guests. It can also be the safest way to capture card information – as long as you have the right protective measures in place. Address Verification Services (AVS) is one of the easiest tools to enable and is fully baked into the Sertifi credit card authorization experience. This post shares the basics and steps to get started.

What is the Address Verification Services (AVS)? 

AVS helps merchant identify suspicious card transactions to reduce the risk of hotel fraud and chargebacks. It’s easy to start using and layer onto your digital credit card authorization process to make card-not-present (CNP) transactions more secure.

How does AVS work?

AVS will compare the billing address used in a credit card transaction against the cardholder’s billing address that’s on file with their issuing bank. You’ll then receive a response code indicating how closely the addresses match. The provided address with either return as a match, partial match, or no match.

Does a partial or no match always indicate fraud?

No – there are other explanations why you’d get a partial or no match code. For example, the cardholder might’ve recently moved and entered their new address before updating their address with their bank.

Instead of immediately declining a payment, set up a rule to alert your customer of the address mismatch and let them try again (but limit the number of retries they’re allowed). That way, you won’t miss out on revenue from a safe transaction.

 What does AVS look like in Sertifi? 

AVS is automatically included as part of our digital authorization solution. For every authorization form you receive, you’ll be able to review the AVS results and take action from there. Visit our support center to learn more about the AVS in Sertifi experience.

If your business regularly processes transactions, it’s important to have rules in place to help reduce fraud and maintain customer trust. Digitizing your authorization forms and using tools like AVS is a great first step to building a fraud prevention strategy.