To protect your e-commerce business from fraudulent activity, set your fraud filters in Authorize.Net

If you’re taking credit card payments through a website, it’s very important that you regularly monitor your sales for potential fraud. Fraudsters are smart and their habits are ever-changing, so it’s always a good idea to review your day’s sales to look for anomalies or outlying sales. A great way to do this is to utilize the Fraud Detection Suite within Authorize.Net. There are several built-in tools that allow you to be automatically notified when sales fall outside of your defined criteria. The most commonly used fraud detection filters are:

1. Daily/Hourly Velocity Filter: With this filter, you can automatically control how many sales may be submitted through your website per day or per hour. This can help prevent against card testing. Fraudsters will sometimes purchase lists of stolen cards, and will then attempt to run hundreds (or thousands) of small sales through your site, with the intention of determining which cards are valid or not. This can leave you with unexpected authorization fees, and legitimate cardholders may notice unauthorized charges and dispute them with their bank. Avoid this with a Daily Velocity filter, so these sales are automatically rejected.
2. AVS/CVV checking: You can automatically decline, or “hold for review” any transactions that don’t have a correctly matching billing address. Requiring your customers to enter their billing address, and then checking the Address Verification Service response and Card Verification Value info (three or four digit numbers on a card) during authorization will greatly reduce fraudulent transactions. We highly recommend declining transactions where you are unable to receive a match, as it’s a common indicator of fraud.
3. Amount Filter: Most businesses know the typical transaction sizes that they process. By setting Amount filters, you can automatically decline or “hold for review” any transactions that fall outside of your “low” or “high” value. This can help protect you against fraudsters who are card testing on your site, and can also prevent unscrupulous employees from processing unauthorized refunds.

If you have any questions about how to set your fraud filters, we ask that you reach out to us, as we’re here to help! You can also contact Authorize.net directly at 877-447-3938.