When running a company, most people opt to have an Internet presence. In fact, some small business have an online presence without having a retail site. This allows a company to sell their merchandise at a lower price since they do not need to have a brick and mortar store. Of course, one quandary many face is the issue of fraud. Without a doubt, businesses large and small deal with fraudulent credit card transactions all the time. Here are four ways a company can prevent fraudulent transactions on their website.
Ship to address: Often, a criminal will steal a credit card and go online. When finding a website, the criminal will order goods and have them shipped to an abandoned building in the neighborhood. When receiving an order, one should only ship to the verified address. However, in some cases, the business should contact the customer and verify more information should they want to ship to a different address. Often, one will have a legitimate reason to use a different address and one can rest easy when verifying extra information. Remember, with most merchant accounts, one will not have problems with credit card processing when they ship to the verified address.
Gut: When receiving and looking at orders, one should go with their instinct. Many times, a customer will order thousands of dollars of items without any inquiry. When this happens, one should hold off on the credit card processing step until they speak to the buyer and confirm the details of the transaction. Ideally, the company should call the buyer and just verify the billing information. In fact, when using merchant accounts, one should always take this step.
IP Address: A company should track the IP addresses of visitors. To do so, one can install tracking software on their website and shopping cart. Then, the company can cross reference the IP address with the physical shipping address. In the past, many companies have discovered fraudulent transactions when they notice that the IP address is from another country or region.
Security: A business should take extra steps to secure their website and data. With a secure website, one can rest easy knowing that criminals will not exploit the company and take advantage of an error.
With these four simple ideas, one can protect their company against credit card fraud. Fortunately, all these solutions are easy for an entrepreneur to implement from day one.