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Debit Card Payments Rejected over Telephone by Companies Using an Address Checker
Comments
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When you get into the corporate world AVS is an optional system but will give you a lower merchant fee rate the more you enforce its use. When you are in the SME space by scheme rules its still optional but payment processors may not be willing to give their merchants the flexibility.
If a company has set is to allow individual payments to go through with AVS or not would be either down to their system set up or their setup with their payment provider.
The company I did this for it was a system setting to do full, partial or no AVS checking and could only be varied by brand not by individual transactions so in their case they realistically couldnt have helped you. On all transactions they always got the two results (full and partial) and the system would then show the payment as authorised or not depending on the setting.
Some companies may have more flexible systems or be willing to bend the rules more. Things may have changed since my last time of dealing with these things but circa 6 years ago the whole thing was still exceptionally lose with even getting authorisation (from a system perspective) actually being optional and the only reason why most transactions do have AVS, CVV, Authorisation, 3D Secure etc is because you get hammered on your fees if you arent putting the vast majority of your payments through these.0 -
InsideInsurance wrote: »When you get into the corporate world AVS is an optional system but will give you a lower merchant fee rate the more you enforce its use. When you are in the SME space by scheme rules its still optional but payment processors may not be willing to give their merchants the flexibility.
If a company has set is to allow individual payments to go through with AVS or not would be either down to their system set up or their setup with their payment provider.
The company I did this for it was a system setting to do full, partial or no AVS checking and could only be varied by brand not by individual transactions so in their case they realistically couldnt have helped you. On all transactions they always got the two results (full and partial) and the system would then show the payment as authorised or not depending on the setting.
Some companies may have more flexible systems or be willing to bend the rules more. Things may have changed since my last time of dealing with these things but circa 6 years ago the whole thing was still exceptionally lose with even getting authorisation (from a system perspective) actually being optional and the only reason why most transactions do have AVS, CVV, Authorisation, 3D Secure etc is because you get hammered on your fees if you arent putting the vast majority of your payments through these.
What I don't understand is that with this recent transaction when the debit card didn't work, they asked if I had another credit card or debit card and I offered a Post Office credit card and it worked ! I have used this before too when there was a problem with complete success which would seem to suggest that there is no address problem, or are credit cards processed differently to debit cards ?0 -
What I don't understand is that with this recent transaction when the debit card didn't work, they asked if I had another credit card or debit card and I offered a Post Office credit card and it worked ! I have used this before too when there was a problem with complete success which would seem to suggest that there is no address problem, or are credit cards processed differently to debit cards ?
No, the process is the same with 99% of them.
If its working with the PO/BOI but not with your other bank then it would suggest the problem is with your bank as the merchant would be sending the same data to both.0 -
InsideInsurance wrote: »No, the process is the same with 99% of them.
If its working with the PO/BOI but not with your other bank then it would suggest the problem is with your bank as the merchant would be sending the same data to both.
That's what I thought initially and challenged my bank but they double checked everything and said there was no problem with my account or the address at their end and the address I was giving suppliers was correct, (which is also born out by the fact that I never had a problem until I moved here) so where that leaves me I don't know. I am seriously thinking of changing my bank after 40 yrs !
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InsideInsurance wrote: »No, the process is the same with 99% of them.
If its working with the PO/BOI but not with your other bank then it would suggest the problem is with your bank as the merchant would be sending the same data to both.
Thought you might be interested in the reply I received from the PAF Advisory Board on my problem:
"Royal Mail confirm that checks of the address data generated by their IT department which is used to create the Postcode Address File (PAF) reveal no errors in recording your address.
I have also checked with an expert in the identity checking industry who suggests that the fact that both companies you quote are using address checking doesn’t automatically mean that this is responsible for the transaction failing. There may be other data sets linked to the their processes that are causing the transaction to be rejected. For example, if your property is newly built the problem may be that the address database used by the financial companies is out of date. If so, it would be down to these companies to contact their supplier and request an update or, if they already have this, then their IT department needs to upload the latest release. If the property is not a new build and the wrong address is being returned (and this has been clearly established as the sole cause of the failure) then the problem would seem to be a bug in the addressing software or a corrupted PAF database. Once again, this can only be rectified by the financial company and their PAF supplier. Your email gives the impression that the financial company employees are checking the address, so yet another reason for failure could be human error in keying information into the payment application - though this seems unlikely.
The type of transaction could also affect the result. If it involves anti money laundering or sophisticated identity checks, then the reason for rejection may be that the address supplied is being matched on the PAF, but the information is not matching to other linked files. A check might use name, address and date of birth information to carry out a search over a number of different data sets including credit files, the full Electoral Register, consented consumer databases, telephone records, utility data etc. These databases will vary according to the nature of the transaction, the statutory requirements and the risk weightings applied by the financial company. Given that you moved to your current address 8 months ago, it may be that the rejection is being triggered by a failure to match you and the new address on one or more of the databases used as part of the background checking.
I am sorry if this sounds rather complicated - identity and credit checking are indeed complicated procedures! What I can say is that the PAF records have your correct address and postcode (they do not contain the names of residents). So the issue is beyond the remit of the PAF Advisory Board, I’m afraid. It seems to me that your problem is one for the financial services companies where the rejection is happening to sort out. I hope that you can get this rectified soon.
Yours sincerely, "
So it appears I am back to square one !
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So it appears I am back to square one !
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The IT departments at the bank or vendor/ vendors payment system supplier will be able to say exactly what is failing. Really it is the later pair that know whats failing. They may not be able to tell you WHY its failing but they should be able to give the technical name for the fail, AVS, 3D Secure etc.
The problem is that "address checker" is just too wooly.
When I did the upgrade for an insurers payment system we effectively had a 3 step process. 1) we do ID checking like AVS, 3D Secure, CRA ID check. If WE were happy with the results 2) we do a card authorisation request, if its authorised then 3) we request collection of funds
As a corporate level company we could make our own decisions on if we wanted to attempt authorisation if any of the checks failed or only partially passed. Similarly we could even attempt to collect funds even if authorisation failed. We however made commitments to our acquiring services provider about not ignoring these things etc in exchange for them lowering their fees.
When you are an vSME you dont get these choices as the rules are dictated to you by your service provider and indeed all of these checks etc are often invisible to you. Your site simply gets told yay or nay to the money. In these cases the vendor needs to contact WorldPay, PayPal, Streamline etc to find out whats going on
Until you know which checks are actually failing its a bit of blind guess work as to guessing whats the problem. Indeed these things may have significantly changed since 6 years ago though generally these are more step changes than night and day0 -
InsideInsurance wrote: »The IT departments at the bank or vendor/ vendors payment system supplier will be able to say exactly what is failing. Really it is the later pair that know whats failing. They may not be able to tell you WHY its failing but they should be able to give the technical name for the fail, AVS, 3D Secure etc.
The problem is that "address checker" is just too wooly.
When I did the upgrade for an insurers payment system we effectively had a 3 step process. 1) we do ID checking like AVS, 3D Secure, CRA ID check. If WE were happy with the results 2) we do a card authorisation request, if its authorised then 3) we request collection of funds
As a corporate level company we could make our own decisions on if we wanted to attempt authorisation if any of the checks failed or only partially passed. Similarly we could even attempt to collect funds even if authorisation failed. We however made commitments to our acquiring services provider about not ignoring these things etc in exchange for them lowering their fees.
When you are an vSME you dont get these choices as the rules are dictated to you by your service provider and indeed all of these checks etc are often invisible to you. Your site simply gets told yay or nay to the money. In these cases the vendor needs to contact WorldPay, PayPal, Streamline etc to find out whats going on
Until you know which checks are actually failing its a bit of blind guess work as to guessing whats the problem. Indeed these things may have significantly changed since 6 years ago though generally these are more step changes than night and day
Are you saying that if I rang the suppliers who failed the payment and asked them to tell me which part is failing the payment request, they would or could tell me ? I did ask but as they are just customer service agents they seemed completely ignorant of the systems and as i said, when I asked to be put through to their IT dept they said they didn't have one ! Would it be any good writing to these companies and requesting they pass my letter explaining the problem to their systems people to investigate what is causing the problem ?0 -
Are you saying that if I rang the suppliers who failed the payment and asked them to tell me which part is failing the payment request, they would or could tell me ?
I would doubt it - that would help a fraudster work out which part of the AVS is wrong, and then try again....
I am seriously thinking of changing my bank after 40 yrs !
A tactic that may work is writing a formal complaint to the bank. That will usually be handled by more senior and more knowledgeable people than the 'normal' customer services team. They may be more able to get to the bottom of it.
(That tactic worked for me when I asked 'unusual' question of my bank. The customer services people just waffled. But the complaints team actually found out the answer for me.)0 -
I would doubt it - that would help a fraudster work out which part of the AVS is wrong, and then try again.
A tactic that may work is writing a formal complaint to the bank. That will usually be handled by more senior and more knowledgeable people than the 'normal' customer services team. They may be more able to get to the bottom of it.
(That tactic worked for me when I asked 'unusual' question of my bank. The customer services people just waffled. But the complaints team actually found out the answer for me.)
I have received a further email from the PAF Board who have suggested that I either write to the Financial Ombudsman as they suggest that there are probably other people who have had the same problem, or write to a newspaper financial column who may investigate it for me.0 -
Are you saying that if I rang the suppliers who failed the payment and asked them to tell me which part is failing the payment request, they would or could tell me ? I did ask but as they are just customer service agents they seemed completely ignorant of the systems and as i said, when I asked to be put through to their IT dept they said they didn't have one ! Would it be any good writing to these companies and requesting they pass my letter explaining the problem to their systems people to investigate what is causing the problem ?
They may or may not be able to say, either from a system perspective (you dont always allow your front line staff see the system logic) or from a business process point of view, you may not want to let a potential fraudster know which checks they are failing.
Someone somewhere in the organisation or their system provider however would know which check is failing.
If its AVS they wont know which digit is wrong as the bank does that bit but they'd be able to say definitively its AVS rather than CRA ID Check etc.0
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