Requiring CVV codes, does it hurt sales?

[tomld2]

I am wondering if by requiring customers 3-4 digit CVV codes to reduce fraud, will it have a negative impact on my sales? Meaning will a number of customers abandon their cart because of not knowing exactly what a CVV code is? I've added an informative explaination chart, but still I wonder. Anyone experienced a down turn after requiring CVV codes?

Thanks
Tom

[antirack]

I don't think so. It should not hurt your sales at all. Most sites display a nice image, and all credit cards have the number, so there is no reason for anyone to not continue.

I've been using this for years and have never ever asked myself this question. I'd rather say if you don't ask them to input those numbers, you are running a very high risk for nothing.

I'd rather ask myself if Verified By Visa hurts sales, with all the MPI, PopUp, Inline Frame and whatever problems :/

[martyt]

It probably doesn't hurt sales (how can you possibly gauge the impact?) But I think requiring CVV can lead to aggravation on the part of customers and customer service - many times, the CVV number is all but unreadable on the card, and customers have a propensity for screwing it up. Since there's no checksum to validate the number as you have with the credit card number itself, you're likely to find yourself either irritating customers when you ask them again and again to enter their number until you can get it to authorize successfully in real-time, or you'll have to e-mail and/or call the cusomter to get the correct number for an offline authorization.

I used to ask for CVV during checkout, but stopped doing it for several reasons:
* It's not required by my payment gateway.
* It doesn't lower my discount rate on transactions, so there's no monetary incentive to use it.
* The incidence of fraud in my little business niche is zero. Zilch. Nada. So I don't need CVV to protect me from fraud.
* If you're not using a third-party payment handler (i.e., if you're storing credit card information on your own web site and communicating directly with the credit card gateway), there are significant liability issues to keeping the CVV around. Credit card companies are adamant that the CVV *not* be stored anywhere and not be printed anywhere so as to keep it out of the hands of hackers. If you don't do real-time authorization (maybe shipping charges have to be calculated manually before you know the total), you have to keep the CVV number around until you *can* do the auth, and that's a significant security exposure.
* Customers screw up the entry all the time, resulting in declines on CC authorization and requiring manual intervention to process the order.

[netguy]

We require the CVV code to be entered, but just flag it and let the order go through if it doesn't verify in real time. Our printouts show any problems, then we determine how to proceed by looking at the address verification.

If the address/zip matches the cardholder, and they are not ordering 100 of the same thing with overnight delivery to Nigeria... we generally go ahead and ship it. ;)

Steve

[lecaptain]

I think it depends on the type of products you are shipping and the margins you make. Previously we used a variety of checks, but still got hit with the odd run of fraud here and there.

CVV is great because now we have a clear yes or no answer when we come to process orders. It saves us time by easily catching fraud that previously our checks would have flagged up (which took time), and it also highlights customer data entry errors.

Never looked back since we started to use it.

[wayzel]

If you are in a high-fraud category, you will save more by checking CVV than the decline in sales caused by it. CVV is much more of a useful anti-fraud tool than AVS. I would estimate 3-5 times as much fraud if we allowed non-matching CVV transactions to go through. Anyone with a name and credit card number can look up the person's address in the white pages online. People move and bank address information can be out of whack.

The downsides are that almost no Canadian or international cards support real-time CVV checking, some customers get confused so you will see multiple authorization attempts before they get it right (which costs you money on the gateway side,) and you will occasionally lose a sale due to frustration.