Enhanced AVS Handling Filter

It is recommended that you use the

Authorize and hold for review

filter action for AVS response codes B, E, R, G, U, S, and N.

You must edit your payment form settings to require the

Billing Address

and

ZIP Code

fields regardless of your integration method. For details on configuring payment form settings, see Accept Payment Settings.

If you select

Authorize and hold for review

as the filter action, you should approve or void held transactions within 72 hours.

All transactions that return an AVS response code have received an authorization from the card issuing bank. If the transaction is declined by the issuing bank, there is no AVS response code.

The N response code indicates that neither the street address nor ZIP code match. An N response code is typically a strong indicator of fraud. However, the transaction might be legitimate if a customer has recently moved and has not updated their address with the card issuing bank.

To avoid errors when accepting gift cards (stored-value cards with a Visa, Mastercard, Discover or American Express logo), do not select the radio button under

Decline

for the U response code. Typically, the user's billing address is not on file at the card issuing bank. Select the radio button under

Authorize and Hold for Review

to manually review these types of transactions, or select the radio button under

Process, Report Triggered Filters

to monitor triggered transactions.

Not all banks outside the United States will return codes G, U, and S. These codes are not absolutely effective for preventing transactions from outside the United States. Use the Regional IP Address Filter if you do not want to accept transactions from outside the United States.

In most cases, Y is a desired response code, so you should select the

Allow

radio button. You should only set Y to

Decline

if you need to be certain that both the street address and full 9-digit ZIP code match exactly. Selecting

Decline

is likely to block legitimate transactions.

Only one AVS response code will return for each transaction. For example, a transaction cannot receive both an A (ZIP code mismatch) and a G (non-U.S. card issuing bank) response code.

The Enhanced AVS Handling Filter is not intended for use as an absolute protection against suspicious transaction activity. Since there are many reasons why an address and ZIP code might not match, you should consider your business's level of risk carefully when configuring your filter settings.

When a transaction triggers more than one filter, and each filter is configured with a different action, the most severe filter action is applied to the transaction. For example, suppose that you configure filter A to decline all triggered transactions, and you configure filter B to authorize but hold all triggered transactions. If a transaction triggers both filters A and B, it is declined rather than authorized and held for review.