When you set up a Moneris or PayPal merchant account in Administration, you select the level of its Address Verification Service (AVS). AVS is fraud protection to verify customer billing addresses submitted through online payment transactions. If you select “Full,” “Medium,” or “Light,” the program uses AVS to process transactions through your merchant account.
With AVS, the gateway issues a transaction to authorize the payment. An authorization transaction only puts a hold on the credit card account for the transaction amount. No charges are applied to the card. If the program does not post a follow-up transaction within a few hours, the authorization transaction expires.
In response to the authorization transaction, Moneris or PayPal returns information about the payment, including whether the bank supports AVS and whether two AVS fields – AVSADDR (numeric portion of the street address) and AVSZIP (Zip code) – are correct. Depending on the AVS level selected for the merchant account, the program uses this information to determine whether to accept the payment transaction.
Note: The program performs this service only when the selected gateway supports AVS for the country of the transaction. For information about this AVS support, contact your gateway.
| • | Full: To accept transactions only when both the street address and Zip code match, select this option. |
| • | Medium: To accept transactions when either the street address or Zip code match, select this option. We recommend you select this option. |
| • | Light: To deny transactions only when neither the street address nor the Zip code match, select this option. This level may accept transactions when either the street address or Zip code returns no response, regardless of whether the other criteria matches. |
| • | None: To perform no address verification, select this option. |
Depending on whether the transaction passes AVS, the program then uses the PNREF value received from the authorization transaction to issue a follow-up transaction.
| • | If the transaction passes AVS, the program issues a “Delayed Capture” transaction. The delayed capture transaction issues the charge against the credit card. |
| • | If the transaction fails AVS, the program issues a “Void” transaction. The void transaction removes the hold from the credit card, but does not issue a charge against the card. |
Tip: If only authorization (AUTH) transactions appear for a specific date in reports, rerun the reports for that date. In the Select Reports Filters section of the Custom Report Template, select at least “Authorization,” “Delayed Capture,” and “Void” as transaction types. We recommend you also include both “Approvals” and “Declines.” In the output field list, include “AVS Street Match” and “AVS ZIP Match.”