Masachusetts Shave Business Blog

Many businesses have been subjected to credit card fraud, and in most cases it is the seller who loses the money. Although banks refund the client the money for credit cards that have their entire information stolen and the balance is withdrawn at an ATM, this isn’t the case for merchant purchases, as the banks simply make the seller ‘guilty’.

First of all, most eCommerce sites have a built-in protection against fraudulent buyers; automated systems can warn you to put any suspicious shipments on hold so you can review the order and contact the buyer before shipping any products or giving awa services.

But mostly, if you don’t want trouble with your merchant accounts, you should do with manually checking orders–if there aren’t too many of them. Pay attention to shipping address, if the billing address and shipping address is different, the order is likely to be fraudulent. Also, you should check for overnight shipping purchases; they are the most likely to be fraudulent, as the order can be charged back and not shipped if the shipping takes slower.

Also, if you offer international shipping, check for orders to places like Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, as they tend to be fraudulent due to the activity of foreign hackers. Of course, if anything suspicious, for example, numerous single item orders or unrelated product orders occur, be sure to manually approve them. This way, you are more likely to avoid credit card fraud.

Remember that, although it is admittedly absurd, it is your sole responsibility as a seller to check for suspicious transactions in your retail merchant account. You don’t want costly chargebacks to appear on your monthly statement; neither do you want to lose the shipped items that were ordered with credit cards.