What are Address Verification Service Codes?

Whether you’re looking to process ad hoc or recurring payments, there are several fraud detection methods available that will help you protect your business from chargebacks. One of the most common is the Address Verification Service (AVS), a system that checks whether a customer’s billing address matches the one on their credit card account. AVS is a vital tool for anyone who sells products or services online, and can help reduce the number of chargebacks that result from inaccurate address information.

Developed to aid point-of-sale Mail Order/Telephone Order (MOTO) transactions, AVS compares the customer’s billing address against the one stored by their credit card issuer. When a payment is made, the AVS system submits the billing address and ZIP code to be cross-checked against existing records. The issuing bank then delivers a response code to the merchant that details if there was a full match, partial match, negative match, no match, retry, unavailable, or international card.

Of course, a simple check of address verification services doesn’t always work – there are many reasons why an AVS search might return a partial or negative match. This can be down to human error, such as a customer entering the street address incorrectly or even just getting a digit in their postcode wrong. Luckily, the major card companies’ AVS codes offer some context around these mismatches, so merchants can use their judgment when using this information. A code such as X or W indicates a full match, while all three companies will provide a response code of N to indicate that there was no match between the street address and postcode.