How can I make customers feel safe buying online?
How do I prevent customer-dispute problems?

We've prepared our own Internet Merchant Checklist to help you maximize sales and minimize customer problems. Try these suggestions and see what a difference it makes!

1) Use appropriate fraud protection measures.

Are you shipping expensive items? If so, be sure to use a package service that provides proof of delivery. There will always be some customers out there who falsely claim that a package was not received (and occasionally there will be packages that truly are lost or stolen). Since you bear the responsibility for those losses, you should take care not to put large amounts of money at risk.

2) Present a professional appearance.

You've got a tough job: you need to convince people to buy something just by looking at a Web page. If your site looks amateurish, it will be a turn-off to consumers. They probably won't buy from someone whose Web site has spelling and grammar errors, or is loaded with screaming headlines and gaudy, mismatched colour schemes.

Most of the people who visit your site will find the idea of ordering online unusual. So your site needs to inspire visitors with confidence. It should say that yours is the kind of company that does things right, and that if someone orders from you, it will be a good experience.

Of course there is no direct connection between the quality of your site and the quality of your company. A company could have a brilliant graphic designer and lousy products. But usually there is a connection, and that is what visitors to your site will assume. If you are unable to put up a good Web site, then it seems natural to assume that your company cannot deliver good products or services.

So check that spelling and grammar. Seek out graphics that give you that "professional look". And be sure to compare your Web site to others in your industry. Those extra efforts will go a long way.

3) Offer a CHECKOUT button everywhere.

Many of our clients forget this crucial step. You must place the View Cart / Checkout button at the top and bottom of every single page on your Web site. If you don't do this, a customer who is browsing your site will be unable to return to the shopping cart screen and finish the order. You will likely lose that sale.

For a good example of this practice, visit some of the larger online shopping sites such as Amazon.com. These sites offer a View Cart button at the top and bottom of every single page, even the home page.

4) Emphasize service

As we mentioned before, most of the people who visit your store will still find the idea of buying online a little strange. You have to reassure them. The most powerful confidence builder is a top-quality site: high production values go to work directly on the visitor's subconscious. But it's also important to reassure visitors explicitly.

For example, if you are determined to provide great customer service, tell your visitors so, right on your site. You can let them know about your refund policy, and tell them that customer satisfaction is a primary concern.

If you try ordering online yourself, you'll find one of the biggest concerns that you have is: who are these guys? Did they actually get my order? Are they going to send me the products? When?

So make sure that you ship orders quickly. Web users want fast results. They don't want to hear that they should expect to wait 4-6 weeks for delivery; this is not 1974! Make sure they get their order in just a few days.

5) Remind customers of your relationship with CCAvenue.

To ensure that customers clearly understand CCAvenue's role as your secure online Payment Processor, be sure to refer to CCAvenue in all of your communications with customers. This includes not only your online marketing materials, but also your packing materials and invoicing.

Proper identification of CCAvenue as your secure online Payment Processor will also help customers remember the transaction when they receive their monthly credit card bill. This minimizes the occurrence of unnecessary disputes.

6) Be Real. Be Reachable

Customers want to know how to get in touch with you if they have questions. Be sure to supply your E-mail address, your street address, and a contact phone number. We're always happy to help with any billing questions that may arise.

When a customer does send you E-mail, respond promptly! Customers deserve to be treated like god. If you can, make it a policy to respond to E-mail within one business day, customers will be delighted to see that you care about them. Anything you can do to show that you are "for real" will help increase orders. If possible, include an image of your catalog or building, customer testimonials, or even a brief company history.

7) Describe your products for what they are

Be sure that customers are familiar with your products before they order. You can achieve this goal by thoroughly describing your merchandise, showing photos, and disclosing any important limitations.

What this means is: don't surprise the customers! If you're selling a book, how many pages is it? If it's a video, what's the running time? If it's a consumable item (such as food, cosmetics, etc.), what quantity is being sold?

If you manage customers' expectations before the sale, you'll avoid disappointing them later.

A White Paper On How To Prevent Online Credit Card Fraud

Contrary to popular belief, merchants are far more at risk from credit card fraud than are consumers. While consumers may face headaches trying to get a fraudulent charge reversed, merchants lose the cost of the product sold, pay charge back fees, and face the possibility of having their merchant account closed. Though exact estimates are difficult to come by, it's safe to say that if you offer a product or service online, criminals will attempt to commit fraud against your company. The purpose of this white paper is to look at the different types of fraud online merchants may encounter, how criminals attempt to take advantage of you, and how you can develop a comprehensive fraud detection system that can keep fraudulent orders at manageable levels. While the focus of this document will be mostly on Visa and MasterCard type transactions, the ideas and concepts generally prove valid with other credit cards such as American Express, Diners club International, and JCB Cards. There is no charge back or fraud related issues as far as Net-Banking transactions are concerned.

Examining Online Credit Card Fraud

The first shock to hit many companies when they first begin selling products over the Internet is that merchants have almost no protection against online fraud. Taking a credit card payment over the Internet constitutes what the credit card companies refer to as a 'Card Not Present' transaction. When there is no customer signature or the card was not present at the time of the transaction, as is the case with almost all online credit card transactions, the credit card company will reimburse the customer and the merchant is left unprotected. To add insult to injury, the merchant is fined a charge back fee by all Indian and foreign payment gateways except CCAvenue.com. Online credit card fraud against merchants can be broken out into three major categories:

Organized Fraud is a form of organized crime. The criminals use identity theft or some other means to apply for valid credit cards under someone else's name. Once issued, they set up a drop location where they have goods delivered to (usually a vacant house or apartment) and they spend the cards up to their limit. When the bill comes 30 - 45 days later, there's nobody there to pay it and the criminals move on to another credit card. A minor variation on this theme is the hacker/cracker using software to generate seemingly valid credit card numbers. Both types of criminals are normally looking for items that can be easily converted into cash. These are probably the hardest criminals to catch because they know all the ins and outs of the system and are constantly altering their techniques as soon as an anti-fraud measure begins to show any level of success.

Opportunistic Fraud is, quite simply, fraud that is committed because the opportunity happens to present itself. Perhaps a waiter, a little short on cash, copies down the credit card info from a customer and then goes online and buys his wife a nice birthday present.
Cardholder Fraud is when the legitimate cardholder is the person committing fraud. Sometimes they claim they never received the merchandise. Sometimes they claim they never ordered the merchandise. Whatever the excuse, the cardholder knows how card not present transactions are treated by the credit card companies and aims to take advantage of the system. As the credit card company will stick the merchant with the liability.

Controlling Online Credit Card Fraud

There are actually quite a few tools and common sense tips to help you control online credit card fraud. I want to make it clear that there is absolutely no reasonable way to completely eliminate online credit card fraud.

(Address Verification Service) AVS check on every transaction. Since AVS is not possible in India in real time, we carryout a Virtual AVS which we match your customer's billing address with his IP address location at the time of the transaction, his Tel. no. & the Zip Code provided by him.

Be extremely vary of orders where the shipping and billing addresses are not the same. Obviously if you are in a business that sells items traditionally given as gifts (flowers) this may be difficult but if the majority of your customers bill to the same address they ship to, then be cautious of orders that are being shipped to a different address.

CVV2/CVC2 authentication through our Citibank Gateway. As of Jan. 1, 1997 for MasterCard and Jan. 1, 2001 for Visa all newly issued credit and debit cards carries a 3 digit non-embossed number on the back of the card (American Express has the number on the front of the card). This number is not included in the data contained on the magnetic stripe of the card and is not printed on credit card statements or anywhere else. It should provide some sense of verification that the person entering the CVV2/CVC2 number actually has the card in front of them.

Pay extra attention to orders that are for amounts greater than the norm or consist mostly of one type of item. Criminals trying to commit fraud will often place large orders for specific items that they know they can resell easily. Customers who place multiple small orders should draw your attention as well. Some criminals are aware that cautious merchants scrutinize large transactions so the criminal simply places many smaller orders rather than one large one.

Be alert of orders that originate from email addresses issued by free hosting providers like yahoo.com, hotmail.com, etc. While this may be extreme due to the widespread use of Hotmail and Yahoo addresses, it should at least set off some warning bells when combined with other warning signs.

Keep an eye out for orders from different persons being shipped to the same delivery address. This may indicate a drop box or drop location where criminals are having orders delivered to. Pay particular attention if the card or the shipping address is in an area prone to credit card fraud. According to a Clear Commerce survey,

The top 12 international countries with highest online fraud rates are :-
Nigeria
Ukraine
Indonesia
Yugoslavia
Lithuania
Egypt
Romania
Bulgaria
Turkey
Russia
Pakistan
Malaysia

The top 12 international countries with lowest online fraud rates are :-
Austria
New Zealand
Taiwan
Norway
Spain
Japan
Switzerland
South Africa
Hong Kong
UK
France
Australia

Watch for multiple orders being placed over a short period of time. Many criminals will attempt to run up a number of transaction before the owner finds out or in the case of a stolen identity before the first bill arrives.

Pick up the phone. If you have any suspicions about an order call the contact phone number given by the customer and attempt to confirm the details of the order. If an order is of a high value and suspicious take time to call these Credit Card Issuer numbers and verify your customers credentials as appearing on your CCAvenue orders.

Visa Merchant Verification Service-800-847-2750
Master Card Assist-800-622-7747
American Express Address Verification-800-528-2121
If the order is over Rs.12250 or $250 American Express will validate the customer on your behalf, call 1-800-876-9786.

Manual Authorization

Over & above,if you still have the gut feeling that something is just not right about the order you have received, then just email CCAvenue at service@ccavenue.com & request manual authorization of the particular order & we will take care of the rest.
Our manual authorization procedure requests your clients to fax the following documents to us for verification.

(A) The credit card statement which clearly shows the card number & the billing address of the card. The statement should be a recent one & should be of the same credit card used for the transaction.

(B) A national ID of the person who has used the credit card. This should be a photo ID of any of the following:-
* Driver's Licence
* Social Security Card
* Passport or National Identity Card

Advanced Fraud Prevention Techniques Which You Can Use.

While I haven't elaborated on some of the more proprietary fraud detection methods utilized by CCAvenue, you may use the following links to start with fraud detection at your end. Since real time Address Verification Service is not possible anywhere in the world except U.S.A., we here atCCAvenue carryout a virtual AVS in which we put in the Telephone no. given in the billing address and we can get the address and the name of the person that have placed the order. You can check out this link for all the US customers telephone nos. http://www.reversephonedirectory.com/ & for other countries of the world, click on this link:- http://www.teldir.com . For Indian customers Telephone Look Up you can check out some of these links:

Telephone Look Up : INDIA
Mumbai : http://mumbai.mtnl.net.in/directory/telephone.html
Andra Pradesh : http://www.ap-telecom.gov.in/enquiry/enquiryhome.htm
Goa : http://www.goatelecom.net/dirsearch3.asp
Kerala : http://www.keralatelecom.com/
Himachal Pradesh (Shimla) : http://www.shimla.dotindia.com/search.asp
Haryana : http://61.0.28.14/abdir.asp
Maharashtra (Dhule) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/dhule.htm
Maharashtra (Jalgaon) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/jalgaon.htm
Maharashtra (Buldhana) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/buldhana.htm
Maharashtra (Akola) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/akola.htm
Maharashtra (Amravati) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/AMRAVATI.htm
Maharashtra (Wardha) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/wardha.htm
Maharashtra (Nagpur) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/nagpur.htm
Maharashtra (Yeotmal) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/yeotmal.htm
Maharashtra (Chandrapur) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/chandrapur.htm
Maharashtra (Bhandara) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/bhandara.htm
Maharashtra (Nanded) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/nanded.htm
Maharashtra (Parbhani) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/parbhani.htm
Maharashtra (Latur) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/latur.htm
Maharashtra (Beed) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/beed.htm
Maharashtra (Sholapur) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/solapur.htm
Maharashtra (Jalna) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/jalna.htm
Maharashtra (Aurangabad) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/abad.htm
Maharashtra (Sangali) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/sangli.htm
Maharashtra (Kolhapur) : http://www.kolhapur.dotindia.com/database/dir_enquiry/dir_enquiry.asp
Maharashtra (Sindudurga) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/sindhu.htm
Maharashtra (Satara) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/satara.htm
Maharashtra (Pune) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/pune.htm
Maharashtra (Ratnagiri) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/ratnagiri.htm
Maharashtra (Ahmednagar) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/AHMEDNAGAR.htm
Maharashtra (Raigad) : http://www.maharashtracircle.net.in/mdir/raigad.htm
Orissa (Berhampur) : http://www.bamtd.com/DIREBER.htm
Orissa (Bhubaneswar, Khurda, Daspalla, Balugaon, Puri) : http://www.bhubaneswartelecom.com/ind6.htm
Orissa (Cuttack) : http://www.cuttack-telecom.com/Directory.asp
Orissa (Baripada): http://www.baripadatelecom.com/Directory.asp
Orrisa (keonjhar) : http://www.keonjhartelecom.com/phone_qry2.htm
Orrisa (phulbani) : http://www.phulbani-telecom.com/home1.htm
Rajasthan : http://rajasthan.dotindia.com/frameindex.html
TamilNadu : http://tamilnadu.dotindia.com/enquiry/dq/dir.htm
Uttar Pradesh (Lucknow) : http://lucknow.dotindia.com/ndq/ndq.asp
Uttar Pradesh (Agra) : http://www.agratelecom.com/
Uttar Pradesh (Bijnor) : http://www.bijnortelecom.com/bijnor_directory.htm
Uttar Pradesh (Meerut) : http://www.meeruttelecom.com/dir_search.html
Uttar Pradesh (Muzaffar Nagar) : http://www.muzaffarnagartelecom.com/search.htm
Uttar Pradesh (Mathura) : http://www.mathuratelecom.com/
Uttar Pradesh (Noida) : http://www.noidatelecom.com/source/directory.jsp
Uttar Pradesh (Rampur) : http://www.rampur-uptelecom.com/search.html
Uttar Pradesh (Sharanpur) : http://www.saharanpurtelecom.com/search.html
Chennai : http://chennaitelephones.gov.in/newdq/index.html
Calcutta : http://www.calcuttatelephones.com/dq/dqanybody.shtml

Over and above, If you still not able to find an appropriate link to do a reverse Look Up of an order you have received, I advise you to go to www.google.com and search for your specific query. I am sure, you will get dozens of resourceful links.

Reverse IP Checking

Many frauds occur from IP (Internet Protocol) addresses that are not valid or are not what you think they are. I can give you a link that you can check the IP address of a particular order http://www.amnesi.com/hostinfo/ipinfo.jhtml CCAvenue provides the original IP of each & every transaction, which is displayed on all your respective CCAvenue orders.

Zip Code Mapping

Often you will discover certain zip codes produce fraud rates that are significantly different than your norms. Keep in mind that professional criminals are aware of this fraud prevention technique and will often offer address information that attempts to bypass this. So it's equally important to check whether the zipcode of the order that you are shipping the goods is a genuine or not. Please check this link to get the correct and accurate information about the zip code of a particular order.
http://www.mailerssoftware.com/lookups/ZipCityPhone.asp

Over and above, If you have some great fraud prevention tips and resources, which you would like to share with other CCAvenue merchants, please do email it to us through the "Help Desk" function available above.

Fraud Reviews

If fraud starts to become a problem for your business, someone should be assigned the task of reviewing fraudulent transactions with the goal of identifying where the criminals are slipping through the cracks. Criminals do nothing but think of ways to get over on you and if you have become a target, you should commit at least an equal level of resources at stopping them.

Summary

Every merchant has to worry about online credit card fraud. Some merchants sell high value items and can tolerate few losses while other merchants may sell items like downloadable software that costs the merchant nothing in the event of fraud but may result in the termination of their merchant account with us if they incur too many fraudulent transactions. One of the most important factors in controlling fraud is understanding the customer and implementing security measures. The better you get at understanding your customers, the better you will become at identifying and controlling fraud.

'AUTHORIZE AND CAPTURE' AND OTHER FACILITIES AVAILABLE
CCAvenue's 'Authorize and Capture' feature is a boon to you as an E-commerce website owner. After successful authorization of an order, CCAvenue gives you total control of the options that you can choose for the transaction.

The options available to you are:

Pending
By default, the transaction is kept on 'Pending' mode, and remains so for twelve days, to enable you use any other option. If you fail to use any of the options, then the transaction is automatically deleted from the entire system.

Shipped/Order Executed
When you select the 'Shipped/Order Executed' option, only then the transaction is captured, your customer's credit card is charged, and your account is credited.

Cancel
If, for some unforeseen reasons, you are unable to fulfil your customer's orders, you can utilize the 'Cancel' option and the entire transaction is cancelled. With CCAvenue, no cancellation charge is to be borne by you. Most of the other Indian Payment Gateway Providers charge a hefty 4% to 5% of the transaction amount as cancellation charges

Partial Execution
Also, if you are able to execute the order partially only, only your desired partial amount will be charged to your customer's credit card and the balance will be cancelled. No cancellation fee, with regards to the cancelled amount, will be charged to you.

CCAvenue offers to you, a gamut of easy to use payment collection facilities, to choose from:-

CCAvenue Variable Amount Interface : Ideal for merchants with a web storefront, The CCAvenue Web Link uses a easy-to-use HTML form post interface for credit card and net banking transaction authorization.

CCAvenue Shopping Cart Interface : For merchants without web developing resources, the CCAvenue Shopping cart allows the sub-merchant to integrate a shopping cart directly into their website in a matter of a couple of hours.

CCAvenue Bill/Invoice Payment Collection Interface : Ideal for all merchants as a means to confirm any telephonic or electronic negotiations or to otherwise raise instant bills to shorten the transaction processing time.

CCAvenue Auction Payment Collection Interface : Ideal for merchants hosting auctions either on their own sites, or on auction sites like baazee.com and ebay.com. The Auction Payment Collection Facility enables merchants to process payments for winning bids online.

CCAvenue Virtual Terminal Interface : For merchants in export, retail or exhibition business, the CCAvenue Virtual Terminal provides a convenient way of manually entering and processing credit card transactions