| Security and Fraud Prevention |
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Security is a very important area that must be considered when choosing an online payments platform. The first step is to be sure that you are dealing with a reputable company who are PCI compliant. Payment Cards Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a worldwide security standard that applies to organisations that transmit, process or store cardholder data. See our Security section for more information on PCI DSS.
The next area to consider is the fraud prevention services offered by the PSP or payments bureau. Here is a list of the common services that you should expect to be offered:
AVS is a service that allows the billing address provided by the customer to be verified with the issuing bank at the time of authorisation. It is an extra security measure that can help to reduce the number of fraudulent transactions.
The CVC is an extra security measure introduced to give increased protection against credit card fraud. A 3 or 4 digit security code is usually printed on the back of the card. The customer will be required to enter this along with the credit card number and expiry date. It will be verified along with this information by the credit card issuer. CVC is also known as Card Security Code (CSC) and Card Verification Value (CVV). The naming and the location of the number on the card may differ but the concept is the same.
3D-Secure is the payment's industries Internet authentication standard. It can be thought of as the online version of chip and pin. The Visa implementation of the standard is known as Verified By Visa and the Mastercard implementation is known as Mastercard Securecode. Cardholders who are registered for 3D-Secure will have a personal password that is associated with their account. When they want to make a purchase online they can use their password to verify their identity. They can only do this if the website that they are making their purchase on supports 3D-Secure. There are advantages to both the Merchant and the customer for 3D-Secure. For the merchant it can help to reduce chargebacks and in the case where a chargeback occurs the liability can be shifted to the cardholders issuing bank if the authorisation was verified by 3D-Secure. For the customer it will give them increased confidence when making a purchase as they can see that you care about security.
The Security & Fraud Prevention Section of our Payment Service Provider comparison table will allow you to compare the security and fraud prevention services offer by the Payment Service Providers.
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Some service providers will offer their own custom fraud checking routines or fraud scoring systems. Their fraud checks will highlight transactions that they suspect maybe fraudulent. Examples of such checks might be to look for transactions where the card is issued in a country with a high level of fraud, to highlight transactions where the delivery address differs from the billing address. Fraud checking is good as it can help reduce the number of fraudulent transactions and reduce the amount of chargebacks. The security of your own website is something that should also be considered. Depending on your method of integration to the Payment Gateway you may need to be PCI DSS compliant. See our the 
