Address Verification Service (AVS)

AVS is a tool for merchants to reduce the risk associated with “card not present” transactions, such as mail order, telephone order or Internet transactions. The billing address given by the customer is passed in the transaction and it is checked against the billing address on file at the customer’s card issuing bank. AVS can *only* check the numeric digits (0-9), so it *only* verifies the street number & zip code in the address (but not the customer’s name, street name, or city/state). A merchant can set their gateway to require a FULL AVS match (street address & zip code must match) match, or a PARTIAL AVS match (at least the zip code or the street address must match).