Address Verification System (AVS)
 

The Address Verification System (AVS) is a system used to verify the identity of the person claiming to own the credit card. The system will check the billing address of the credit card provided by the user with the address on file at the credit card company. The other security features for the credit card include the CVV2 number.
AVS verifies the numeric portions of a cardholder's billing address. For example, if your addres s is 101 Main Street, Highland, CA 92346, AVS will check 101 and 92346. Sometimes AVS checks additional digits such as an apartment number, other times it does not. Cardholders may receive false negatives, or partial declines for AVS from e-commerce verification systems, which may require manual overrides, voice authorization, or reprogramming of the AVS entries by the card issuing bank.


AVS support


At present, only a few countries support AVS on Visa and MasterCard, notably the USA, Canada and the United Kingdom. American Express offers AVS in other countries.[1]
Cardholders with a bank that does not support AVS may receive an error from Internet stores due to the lack of data.
Besides the Automated verification, some banks do provide merchants with a manual verification system. Usually this is done for foreign credit card accounts as the AVS only works in the same country. This facility helps the merchants to prevent fraud arising from other countries. The merchant's bank calls the customer banks (or send a fax for banks that request them). Some countries like Denmark however prevent banks from verifying customer data.


AVS codes


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Declines due to Address Verification System or AVS Declines

Declined due to AVS Mismatch, the authorization code, along with the hold on the authorized funds, will remain on the customer's card until the card issuing bank removes the authorization. As a result, the held funds may be subtracted from the customer's available balance, and an online statement may reflect the authorization request which might be mistaken for an actual charge. Most card issuing banks will remove authorizations within 3–7 days if they are not claimed for settlement.