Merchants can improve authorization rates for US, UK, and Canadian cardholders by simply providing more information to support the AVS function.

What is AVS and how will it improve my card authorization rate?

AVS or the Address Verification System is a numeric address verification system that contributes as an additional security layer to help reduce the chance of fraud and improve card authorization rate for merchants who are serving US, UK, and Canadian cardholders. In short, AVS verifies the billing address of the cardholder by matching it with the cardholder's physical address to help authorize charges faster and reduce the possibility of fraud.

How does it work?

AVS will detect the numeric portions of the billing address, namely, house number and postal code entered by the customer at the checkout page and match it with the information with the card issuer. If the information matches, the transaction is verified.

How do I enable AVS?

When customizing your checkout form, we highly recommend merchants who are likely to receive card payments from the US, UK, and Canadian cardholders to enable AVS by including a billing address form.

The required fields to enable AVS includes;

• street 1
• city
• state
• country
• postal_code

You can start modifying these changes through our Token API.

Example of AVS verification;

When cardholders from the US, UK, and Canada shops online and reaches your checkout page, they'll have to enter their billing address along with their card information. If the cardholder enters their billing address;

123 Wall Street, New York, NY, 10005, USA

AVS will check if 123 and 10005 match with the information from the card issuer before authorizing a charge. If the numbers do not match, the transaction will be declined.