Protecting your business from fraudulent transactions

• By accepting cards you provide convenience for both you and your customers, but there are some risks.
• One key risk is that third parties may use cards or card details fraudulently.
• You need to be aware of this because fraud could lead to chargebacks and other losses to your business.

What you can do to minimise fraudulent transactions

Make sure that you have policies and procedures for handling irregular or suspicious transactions. Remind your staff that they must take steps to verify that the cardholder is who they say they are.

For card present transactions (being those transactions where the cardholder are at your business with their card), never accept a card if:

• The terminal doesn’t recognise the card
• The card expiry date has passed
• The card or the signature has been visibly altered or tampered with
• The signature doesn’t match that on the back of the card
• The card is damaged

Online & phone payments

Card-not-present transactions (being those transactions where the cardholder is not at your business with their card) carry a higher risk of fraud, because you can’t verify whether the person you are dealing with actually has their card with them and the signature matches that on their card.

By carrying out the following checks, you can reduce the likelihood of fraudulent activity:

• Request the card verification code, more commonly known as CVV2 or CVC2. It is the last 3 digits printed on the signature panel of MasterCard and Visa cards and helps validate that the customer actually has a genuine card.
• Use a security program such as EMV 3DS (aka 3DS2.0)
• Ask for comprehensive customer details and do validity checks
• Follow up with an order confirmation
• Always use your own courier
• Ask for identification on delivery and don’t leave goods at unattended addresses
• Use minimum and maximum transaction amount controls