Wednesday 5 September 2012

Protect your online business from fraudulent purchases - Business - Entrepreneurship


Do you know how to protect your online store from online credit card fraud? If you own an online store, it is only matter of time before online thieves knock on your door. We are a leading distributor of ladies wholesale handbags, and we certainly have encountered many fraudulent purchases. In this article, we will show you how you can protect your online business.

In today's ecommerce world, knowing how to protect your company and your company's reputation is extremely important. There are many online companies who have become fraud victims every year. Hopefully our experience can help everyone to combat fraudulent purchases and protect your online business and reputation.

Let's begin by looking into how a victim can have his/her card information stolen. Credit card fraud happens whenever a criminal obtains a victim's credit card account number and uses it to make unauthorized purchases. It can be a dishonest restaurant clerk making an extra imprint of your card, a thief who picks up a receipt you discard, someone pretending to be a telemarketer taking your order, accidentally downloaded Trojan virus or spyware giving out victims private information to hackers, the list goes on endless.

Generally, credit card processors have very strict policies regarding charge dispute. A charge dispute occurs when someone makes the claim that the charge made by you was not authorized. Unless you can prove the disputed order is legitimate, the card processor will rule in favor of the customer. Moreover, your company will be noted by your card processor. If too many charged back claims were filed against you, you will be black listed by major credit card companies, which means no more accepting credit card for you. This is serious stuff, folks.

So how do you know if an order is legitimate? In the wholesale handbags industry for example, there is an increasing amount of fraudulent purchases. So we take every precaution to safeguard our business, and your first line of defense will be the card's billing address. This is where your online merchant gateway service company, such as Authorize.net becomes very important. Today, all online merchant gateway service providers can detect a credit card's identity by verifying the billing address of the credit card. The system will check the street numbers and the zip codes with the card company's record and make sure the information will match.

Unfortunately, verifying the billing address may sometimes not be enough nowadays. This is when your personal judgment will be your next line of defense. If you see an order asking you to ship to a different address located at a different state other than the home state of billing address, it should alarm you immediately something is fishy. When this happens, we usually ask the customer a front copy of the credit card. A legitimate card holder always has his/her card in possession. And this extra security measurement will usually help you defend against those online crooks 99% of the time.





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