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Ever heard of AVS (Address Verification System)? No, neither had I, until quite recently as I tried to place an online order from a US based watch reseller.
Basically, AVS verifies the cardholder’s billing address upon placing an order. So in effect, the shipping address and the cardholder billing address have to match. Sounds like a great idea. But as I soon found out, this relatively new security measure didn’t work – at least not from Sweden. The only sure way of getting AVS to work is if you live in the US or Canada. Banks elsewhere are probably not party to this system and so the cardholder address can’t be fetched. In fact it may even be purposely blocked.
Now of course this mostly applies when using smaller retailers (so far) and a debit / credit card like VISA, Mastercard etc. You can get around this by either picking bigger retailers (that may rely on insurance to cover financial loss due to fraud I guess) or use an intermediary like Paypal or Google Checkout whenever possible. But obviously, this security nonsense takes away many of the reasons for having a debit card of any sort. And the question is if it really curbs dedicated fraudsters.
I find it typical of the world we live in that we can be wiretapped and have our financial life data mined, but when we would like to consent to sharing personal info electronically, someone instantly slams the brakes.
