SET is the Secure Electronic Transaction protocol developed by Visa and MasterCard specifically for enabling secure credit card transactions on the Internet. It uses digital certificates to validate the identities of all parties involved in a purchase and encrypts credit card information before sending it across the Internet. Not surprisingly then, merchants have been quick to develop and introduce a number of ways to limit their exposure to fraud. That's why a high proportion of fraudulent orders come from free e-mail addresses and as a result many merchants refuse to accept orders from them or at least perform additional checks. For example, the Web site might display a US business address whilst the order requests delivery to be made to Eastern Europe.
Some merchants go even further and check out who owns the domain name.
This includes the customer's address and telephone number, the name of bank that issued the credit card, and the IP address of the computer from which the order was placed. The best strategy therefore for most merchants would be to construct a tiered matrix that stipulates the level of checking that should be performed on different order categories. For not only do these checks take time and money to perform, they also prevent the use of real-time credit card processing which could in turn lead to lost sales. One solution to this quandary is to employ some automated checking tools. There are a number of these available, but for the purposes of this article I am going to focus on two AntiFraud and CyberSource IVS .