Background
This article aims to provide some guidance on the process of address checking within Caterpay. If you have any specific questions, as will become apparent, you should refer to your own acquiring bank for clarification.
Understanding the settings
When logged in to MMS, you can click preferences from the menu and scroll down to the following section:
Here, you can configure your own business preferences for what to do in the event of a card having this data matched, not checked or not known.
| AVS and CV2 States | |
| Partially Matched | This is when the data supplied by the guest only partially matches what the issuing bank has on record. |
| Not Matched | This is when the data supplied by the guest doesn’t match what the issuing bank has on record. |
| Not Checked | Not Checked occurs if the security check isn’t supported by the issuing bank. |
| Not Known | This is when the customer hasn’t supplied any data to be checked. |
It's worth making two points here. Firstly, the above MMS screenshot is not a "recommended" setting, it's merely an illustration of one account's configuration.
Secondly, some OTA's do not enforce the guest supplying "Postcode" as a required field which of course can have implications depending on your settings, eg where Postcode Not Known = Reject. One OTA has told us that if a card is declined because of missing postcode data, you can mark it as invalid in their extranet. To make practical use of this, it assumes of course that you are trying to verify or charge the card at some point in advance of arrival. A failed card after a no show is of no use and for this reason we recommend verifying the card details (a £0 authorisation check) soon after a booking is received, and particularly for higher value stays.
So, AVS checks only the numerical portion of an address and postcode.
It's important to remember that it's your acquiring bank and NOT the Caterpay gateway that performs these checks. The gateway only instructs the bank how you want to respond to the data being tested and returned.
If two guests provided the following Address data...
1, The Street. Anytown. Countyshire. AB12 3CD
Flat 12, 44 Merton Mills Road. Huddersfield. HD7 3AT
...when this is submitted to the Acquirer in the transaction request, the following numbers are used for the AVS check;
1123
124473
Some Cardholders may have a more complex and confusing address for example it may be similar to the one below. This is how the Card Issuing Bank has the address listed:
4A Rear of 1A-5A, The Hay Market, Grantham, NG32 4HG
However, the guest may have provided you with:
The Willow, 4, The Hay Market, Grantham, NG32 4HG
With this data provided to the Acquirer in the transaction request, the following numbers would be used for the AVS check;
4 3 2 4
However, because the card is actually registered to the red address, then this would only result in a partial match against;
4 1 5 3 2 4
So depending on your preference passed by the gateway to your acquirer, the response returned could be such that the transaction would be authorised if a partial match is set to Accept or declined if set to Reject.
You have to decide on how to achieve the best balance between reducing your risk and not turning away legitimate business.