Hate to be a pest about this, but I changed my settings to allow international orders. For anyone who accepts international orders, do you just fill them without verifying address or other information from the issuing bank credit card? I received my first international order today. The shipping address is actually to a US address, but the credit card is from Cypress? The order is for $55. I'm afraid to accept the order or am I fearful for nothing? It just feels odd. There is so much fraud going on out there that it seems odd to accept this order with no further verification, but an out of the country phone call to the issuing bank seems silly too.

Any input would be appreciated.

Hello reneewood,

It is really up to you, however a few things to keep in mind are if you are currently using a real-time payment gateway and the order went through then the funds on that card have already been authorized for the purchase. The other thing to keep in mind is that just because the billing address may be international and the shipping address is domestic doesn't always flag an order as fraud or something like that...think of it this way, maybe the customer has a working visa in the US but is from another country and they are in the US for an extended period of time. But the bottom line I guess is to go with your gut instinct . Something else you can do is to contact the customer directly and verify...that always seems to work =).

Hopefully this helped

Here is what we have done for years.( We use custom payment)

http://www.parkeryamaha.com/index.asp?Page...on=Custom&ID=63

And if any reasons alert you to fraud go with Western Union or Wire transfer

I just fill the order, but as I've said before, I have a low fraud industry. I've shipped to pretty much everywhere, too, except Africa. Stay away from Africa.

We go overboard and request that they fax us a copy of their credit card, a copy of their credit card statement and a photo ID. We don't care if we lose the order or not, to be honest. International orders are a huge pain for us, and we'd rather not deal with them. We offer to ship internationally only because it's very difficult to find our products elsewhere - and most other places that offer them don't ship internationally because they've been burned too many times before. If they can find the products elsewhere for less hassle, we're more than happy to cancel the order for them.

If I can not get Address verification on an international card (and some cards will now verify) I will use Maxmind.com to check to see where the order originated from. I judge each order individually. If I suspect something is a little iffy I ask for a credit card statement. If I suspect it is really iffy I tell the wire transfer only. If I know an order is fraudulent I immediatley reverse the charge, and enter some statement about fraud and alerting the authorities and cancel the order.

Tip offs are

1. Email address. You are shipping to Tommy Smith and the email is something like tosiijfl@yahoo.com. A free account and nothing close to the persons name.

2. Shipping to a US address on a foriegn card. I have problems with this and have had fraudulent transactions. Do a reverse address lookup and judge. Some ship to a freigh forwarding company and that is fine.

3. Wierd items ordered and in quantiity. They order 10 of something.

4. Reverse phone number search. Often the phone number is bogus.

5% of my business is international but it is a large $$$. Last year I did not have any reversals from international following these rules.

We only accept international cards if the address verifies. We have also had no chargebacks since we started this policy.

I've had a couple of issues related to the freight forwarding service - the DELAY. It hasn't been fraud, but
I've had several where customers hadn't received their packages for awhile and were emailing constantly to check on them.

I've also had customers who have second homes in the U.S. - billing address their native country, shipping address their vacation home. So, it may not be clear cut.


This is a standard red flag. And they usually want it overnight, although they have been getting a bit more savvy about that too. Now, it's not to say that it's always fraud, but check these out VERY closely, especially if you're talking about large dollars.

Hi Dave,
We're considering shpping Internationally, and I am looking for some help with this. I was reading your page from your link above, and I have a question.

On your site it says:
"If FedEx bills us back because you did not pay the current duties and taxes
once your product arrived into your country we will bill your credit card for these fees."

I REALLY like that idea, however my first question is, how are you able to charge a customers' card without the CVV Code?
Won't the processor (ie: Anet) block the transaction?
Also, are we allowed to do that legally?
Thanks for helping me understand the International shipping processes.
Ben N

You guys have been so great, thank you! I also feel that I am in a low fraud industry. But this information has been invaluable in helping me make some decisions. Thank you so much!