What if I suspect an overseas customer may be making a fraudulent purchase?

moon713

We're a small business that sells goods in person and online. We were recently contacted via e-mail by a customer based in Singapore who wished to make a large purchase from us via a remote credit card payment. We are able to accept remote card payments, but asked for ID verification first. The individual then sent us credit card details along with a photo of a Singapore passport page that, upon inspection, does not appear to be genuine. How should we proceed in order to protect our business but also the owner of the credit card (if this is a scam)?

eskbanker

Does your merchant bank agreement spell out the circumstances under which they accept liability for card payments that turn out to be fraudulent, e.g. use of Verified by Visa, etc?

born_again

If you think it's likely to end up with no goods & payment. Then it is your choice not to deal with the.

Try a google reverse search of the picture. Might just prove that you should ignore them. 

Nasqueron

AI can generate surprisingly good ID already even if it's not stolen

moon713

eskbanker said:

Does your merchant bank agreement spell out the circumstances under which they accept liability for card payments that turn out to be fraudulent, e.g. use of Verified by Visa, etc?

Pretty sure they do, yes - we'll double check, thank you.

Grumpy_chap

moon713 said:

We're a small business that sells goods in person and online. We were recently contacted via e-mail by a customer based in Singapore who wished to make a large purchase from us via a remote credit card payment. We are able to accept remote card payments, but asked for ID verification first. The individual then sent us credit card details along with a photo of a Singapore passport page that, upon inspection, does not appear to be genuine. How should we proceed in order to protect our business but also the owner of the credit card (if this is a scam)?

Simply decline the order.

DullGreyGuy

Presumably you sell physical goods so could end up without your goods and no money?

How big is the sale for you? Does the sale make sense? If you sold CDs, someone ordering a range of different items from related artists would make sense... ordering 20 copies of one CD and 25 copies of another totally different artist starts not looking like an eager fan. 

The safest option will always be to decline the order. 

Otherwise follow the methods of others, ask them to send a video holding the passport next to them saying a specified phrase. It's still possible to edit things in video but much harder/more time consuming and you can face match the passport to the person. 

moon713

DullGreyGuy said:

Presumably you sell physical goods so could end up without your goods and no money?

How big is the sale for you? Does the sale make sense? If you sold CDs, someone ordering a range of different items from related artists would make sense... ordering 20 copies of one CD and 25 copies of another totally different artist starts not looking like an eager fan. 

The safest option will always be to decline the order. 

Otherwise follow the methods of others, ask them to send a video holding the passport next to them saying a specified phrase. It's still possible to edit things in video but much harder/more time consuming and you can face match the passport to the person. 

Thanks for your detailed thoughts. We would only ship the physical goods after receiving payment; our worry is that after shipment the card might be flagged up as having been stolen - we aren't sure how long that would take to come to light - or that there would be some other scam afoot that we haven't even thought of. Which would mean that our goods (a big sale, which does make sense in terms of what we sell) would be with the "buyer", but the fraudulent payment would have to be refunded to the card holder.

An additional wrinkle is that the goods are one-off items that we are selling on consignment on behalf of private owners.

Anyway we have taken on board all the advice given, notified the "buyer" that we can't accept his passport photo as authentic ID, and declined the proposed purchase by credit card.  Thanks to all who have contributed to this discussion!

born_again

If card is stolen & reported. Payment will not go through.
I would be more worried that they simply claim the funds back via chargeback.

If you get the "This does not feel right" feeling then better to lose a sale, than lose goods & money. 👍