Address Verification Service

Address Verification Service (AVS) is a fraud prevention measure employed in credit card transactions to verify the authenticity of the billing address provided by a cardholder. During an online purchase, the AVS compares the numerical portion of the billing address entered by the customer with the address on file at the issuing bank. The AVS system assigns a code indicating the level of match between the entered address and the one on record. Merchants can use this information to assess the risk of a fraudulent transaction.

AVS was developed specifically to help merchants from the MOTO industry with transactions, but it has since become a key feature of all card-not-present fraud detection systems.

• For customers in supported countries, AVS provides an extra layer of protection, effectively shielding them from low-sophistication attacks aimed at stealing and misusing their credit card information.
• For merchants, the AVS response signal is a useful piece of information, which should be weighed into the risk scoring. As a result, merchants are better protected from chargeback requests.

Merchants often configure their payment systems to either decline transactions with AVS mismatches or use the information as one of several factors in their fraud prevention strategy.