Discover CVV Code

Jon,

We are in the same situation as Ed and we do swipe every single card.

AL

"J> Retailers should only be charged if the cards are not swiped, from what I > have heard.

The ability to enter the CVV code for all card types would be a great enhancement as an option to turn on/off. Saving a few cents on every CC transaction could add up to big $$ by the end of the year.

CVV will only save money on keyed Discover transactions where some customers get dinged significantly w/o CVV. CVV is a good way to feel secure on keyed transactions. You'd like to be able to tell whether you received a CVV match between what the customer told you was on the card and what the card issuer says. If there isn't a match, the customer may be trying to defraud the merchant.

AVS (zip code) has more of an impact on rates, and then it is still not so simple. But it is certainly true that both AVS and CVV would be good additions to RMS credit functionality along with more than one pin pad option.

Marc Katz Mercury Payment Systems

A interesting note about AVS. We have a customer that gave us his card info over the phone. When we ran the card, it kept telling us that it didn't match AVS. We tried his home address, his store's address, his other store's address, nothing worked.

Now we're getting dinged 3.00% for these transactions, no biggie for his monthly support charges, but it was irritating.

So his card expires and we send him a form to authorize new charges. Charged the card again and again it fails AVS. So I tell him to give us another card that matches AVS.

His statement read;

His name c/o the store's name store's address City, ST Zip.

Finally, he calls the credit card company to find out what address is the proper one.

The reason it was failing was because of the c/o (Care Of) part. On his statement, it printed 4 lines, the c/o on a second line under his name and the address on a third line, but AVS only matched when we did c/o shop name, address. What a pain!

When swiping a card, whether AVS and CVV information is included or not has no affect on the processing rates. When manually entering a card, if you enter AVS and CVV information, your rates stay the same - whether the CVV and AVS match or not. So, as long as you TRY to validate the AVS/CVV, you get the better rates - even if the result of the AVS or CVV is no match.

Jared