CVD and AVS verifies the validity of the credit card, expiry date and any additional details (such as the Card Verification Digits or Address Verification details). It does not verify the available amount or lock any funds on the credit card.
The Card Validation Digits (CVD) value refers to the numbers appearing on the back of the credit card rather than the numbers imprinted on the front. It is a fraud prevention tool that enables merchants to verify data provided by the cardholder at transaction time. This data is submitted along with the transaction to the issuing bank, which provides a response indicating whether the data is a match.
The response that is received from CVD verification is intended to provide added security and fraud prevention, but the response itself does not affect the completion of a transaction. Upon receiving a response, the choice whether to proceed with a transaction is left entirely to the merchant. The response is not a strict guideline of which transaction will approve or decline.
Address Verification Service (AVS) is an optional fraud-prevention tool offered by issuing banks whereby a cardholder's address is submitted as part of the transaction authorization. The AVS address is then compared to the address kept on file at the issuing bank. AVS checks whether the street number, street name and zip/postal code match. The issuing bank returns an AVS result code indicating whether the data was matched successfully. Regardless of the AVS result code returned, the credit card is authorized or declined by the issuing bank.
The response that is received from AVS verification is intended to provide added security and fraud prevention, but the response itself does not affect the completion of a transaction. Upon receiving a response, the choice to proceed with a transaction is left entirely to the merchant. The responses is not a strict guideline of whether a transaction will be approved or declined.
As you can see in the image below, the order here was declined because both the AVS and CVD did not match.
Things to consider:
● CVD is only supported by Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and UnionPay.
● AVS is only supported by Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express.
Security: The CVD value must only be passed to the payment gateway. Under no circumstances may it be stored for subsequent uses or displayed as part of the receipt information.
NOTE: Please be advised that CVD results will NOT be returned in the response for UnionPay.