Are you encountering more credit card declines that you think you should? The Address Verification Service may very well lead to credit cards being unnecessarily declined when your members attempt to pay for events or dues.
IMPORTANT information if you accept credit card payments for your event registrations
Are you having issues with declined credit cards on your event registrations? Are your decline rates higher than you would like? Maybe you should turn off AVS – Address Verification Service.
AVS is used by credit card companies to match the credit card address with the address entered by the user making a purchase. The amount of verification varies. Sometimes it is the full address, other times it is the zip code, sometimes it is the country code. This is dependent on your credit card processor. The question you need to be asking is – why? Why do I care? Why am I using this?
Well, if you were selling or registering for a tangible item, you would like to know that the purchaser paying for the item is legit before you send the product (which presumably costs you money) goes out the door. In most Rotary registration situations, you are registering for an event that has no tangible cost. If the user’s credit card is declined your recourse is pretty easy; pay at the door or stay home.
AVS costs you money – typically .15 cents per transaction. Ask yourself – why is this on? Why complicate registrations? What is the risk of fraud when registering Rotarians for an event?
You may turn AVS off either in the configuration panel of your credit card processing company interface or you may have to contact your credit card processor to have this turned off.