How Online Merchants Can Spot Credit Card Fraud
 

Those chargebacks are never pleasant. In the early days, I had my share. But after plenty of grumbling, I decided to consider them what financial expert and radio talk show host Dave Ramsey calls a "stupid tax."

Then, I set my mind to learn from them so I wouldn't keep paying the "stupid tax."

I started by making a list of every chargeback I was hit with over a 12-month period. I rigorously examined them, looking for patterns and similarities. As a result, I instituted some security procedures and checklists that have worked well in greatly reducing the fraud losses from my stores.

I still get stung, but very rarely these days.

The one single step that has most helped reduce fraudulent orders for me and my stores is to eliminate shipping to any location other than North America. I know, that's a drastic step. But while I no doubt do indeed do lose some legitimate business from overseas customers, it has been my experience that most fraud originates overseas.

And my experience is not unusual. Once recent study I have seen, from Cybersource, notes that fraud rates on overseas orders are four times the level of North American orders. Thus, not allowing orders from places other than the U.S. and Canada helps eliminate many of the problems.

Still, almost every day, some thief still tries to get through. Most of them are from criminals trying to see if a credit card number they have is still good. They'll place an order and provide a ship-to address in the U.S.

Below are my top 10 suggestions for catching the fraud before you complete the transaction. As many of these flags as you have on an order, the more apt it is bogus:

1) Shipping FedEx overnight is a frequent marker. The thief figures the merchant will move so fast to process the order that there won't be too much scrutiny. A dead give away and cause for you to seriously question the oder is when the overnight shipping costs approximate the item's cost.