advice on retailers protection when taking credit card payments

dipsy

Hi

can anyone help, if as a retailer you accept a credit card payment and it goes through and then it turns out the card is cloned/stolen etc who is responsible?

the reason I ask is my partner has had an online order for a large ish order and if he sends out goods once he has taken the payment and for whatever reason the card is not as it seems, is he protected?

He has not dealt with this customer before and so I thought I would just ask to ensure that he is not left with a bill for goods supplied and no money for the goods

thanks in advance

wuckfit

Unfortunately if the card subsequently turns out to be stolen, he'll be issued with a chargeback and lose the money. I'm not sure if it matters which card acquisition merchant you use.
The best advice I can give is to get extra information from the customer to double check details, and if anything at all doesn't match then reject the order. Also make sure the courier that is used has a facility to provide verification that the order was signed for, AND importantly that you get to see a copy of the signature that signed for the goods.
Remember, just because an order has been placed, doesn't mean that it has to be accepted. He can insist on talking to the customer over the phone before accepting the order, for example. Any genuine customer won't mind the supplier contacting them to go over the order.

Also it might be worth checking the business insurance to see if it's possible to claim against losses due to fraudulent card transactions. Obviously this will be subject to excesses, and even if he is covered, he'll need to prove to the insurer that he took reasonable steps to ensure that the customer/order was genuine.
I was fortunate in that I never had one fraudulent CNP (customer not present) transaction in 7 years of trading. that said, I didn't have a live online webshop which I'm sure is open to all manner of abuse, given the amount of speculative emails I got wanting me to ship what would be 5 years worth of stock of one product that I sold over to Indonesia, for example.

dipsy

so basically if you take credit card payments and it turns out to be stolen/cloned you stand to lose the money and the goods?

ILW

Why not take the payment and quote 21 days for delivery. Then check all is OK before despatching.

wuckfit

dipsy wrote: »

so basically if you take credit card payments and it turns out to be stolen/cloned you stand to lose the money and the goods?

pretty much, yes. it's probably worth finding out about insurance to cover this type of loss. most commercial insurers should allow you this type of cover.

wuckfit

ILW wrote: »

Why not take the payment and quote 21 days for delivery. Then check all is OK before despatching.

Sometimes the chargeback can occur months after the event