- E-Commerce
- How to Prevent Abandoned Shopping Carts
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- A Look at Your Online Customer Service
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- Fighting Fraud on the Web
- The Essential Elements of Great Customer Service
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- Tips for Doing More With Less in a Down Economy
- Blogging and the Wholesale Business Owner
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- Basic SEO Tips for Online Wholesalers
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Fighting Fraud on the Web
By Sarah Pearson Published: 02/02/2009
Bringing your wholesale business online is a smart move to make in order to reach more customers and therefore make more sales, but as with anything, there are some drawbacks, and perhaps the biggest one to worry about is credit card fraud.
The majority of your online sales will be paid for via credit card, and since there is really no efficient or effective way around that, you need to take steps to ensure you protect yourself. If a stolen credit card is used to make a purchase, then the rightful owner of that card is eventually going to figure it out and get his or her money back...that may leave you without product AND out the money you were initially paid.
Fortunately, there are some easy things you can do to fight back against credit card fraud and stop it before it gets to that point. To make sure it is as effective as possible, you need to implement these policies right away and make sure they are consistently followed so that it is much harder for anything to slip through the cracks and cost you any of your hard earned profits.
The first step you can take to combat fraud is to check the billing addresses of your orders against the actual mailing addresses before finalizing and processing an order. If they do not match, this should throw up a red flag for you, and you should do further investigating. Some online merchants will not ship at all if the addresses do not match, and this may be a sound policy for you to implement if you want to be extra cautious. To make checking credit card information easier for you, check with your processor to find out if they have a secure website that you can log into on your own. This eliminates the need for you to sit around on the phone, and you will still be able to make sure everything is on the up and up.
Other warning signs to be on the lookout for include transactions for large or heavy purchases with overnight or other types of priority shipping. If someone is ordering something that will cost an arm and a leg to ship overnight, they may just be in a hurry OR they may not be spending their own money. Have your IT department set things up so orders like this are flagged, and you should also have it set up to flag orders from certain countries known for fraud, such as Nigeria.
When it comes to accepting credit card payments online, it is a necessary evil in many ways, but with some vigilance, you can fight against getting burned and still reap the benefits of the online marketplace.
