The Extra AVS Protection of QPay

I hope most of you already have heard that QFloors recently released a new service to our customers called QPay. It is a credit card processing feature that not only provides greater integration to QFloors but a lot of other benefits as well. I talk about some of the details of QPay in this video.

Unraveling AVS

One thing I wasn’t able to mention in the video, that I think is an important benefit, is that one of the advancements included in QPay has to do with a little known security feature called AVS (Address Verification Service). The manner a credit card processing company implements AVS makes a big difference in both security and also the rate a dealer could be charged for a transaction.

With AVS, every credit card issued by a bank can be connected to a billing address tied to that card. (This is why you have to fill out your billing address when making an online purchase.) It’s meant to prevent fraud.

If you insert a credit card into a terminal via EMV or chip transactions, you’ll notice AVS is not necessary and you don’t have to give a billing address. This is because this method is more secure. But when you take a card over the phone or type it into a website, the credit card companies view this transaction as less secure, with a higher possibility of fraud. Thus they incorporate AVS to make sure the zip code and house number of the billing address match what is on record.

Ideally, both match. But at the very least, the zip code needs to match. If it does not, the fee you will be automatically charged for a transaction with “added security risk” is significant -- in the range of 30-70 basis points per transaction. Or in other words, for every $10,000 in processing, you are hit with a $30-70 fee. And this may not always be a case of fraud on the customer’s part. Sometimes it’s because a zip code was improperly entered. Sometimes banks can make mistakes and put in bad addresses or zip codes. Sometimes the card-issuing banks don’t support AVS. But regardless of why, you (the dealer) are just automatically hit with these high fees if the cards are allowed to be processed.

Many credit card processors kind of just take a “not my problem” approach, and let the transactions go through with the expectation that the dealers will just cover the cost. In addition, if you take a card and process it and it is fraudulent, or if it is a chargeback, your liability is much higher.

At QPay, we wanted to protect you -- both from fraud (which has really spiked since Covid-19, the credit card companies say), and from getting dinged with these high charges. So we notify the dealers if you are about to experience one of these less-than-favorable transactions. You can then determine, with the customer and his/her bank, what the issue is, or you can protect yourself from being victimized.

This is just one more way that QPay can help dealers save money on their credit card processing. There are many more. If you’d like to learn more about QPay, reach out to our sales team at 801-563-0140, option 4.