I'm nearing completion of an eCommerce site and am still debating whether or not I'd like to open up my site to outside the US. I will be a company of 1 to begin and don't have many fraud protection measures in place other than working closely with my vendor to hold shipments until payments clear. But in my experience working at eCommerce companies, most of our fraudulent orders came from ppl ordering outside the US (foreign credit cards) and shipping to a US address. I'm using Authorize.net as my payment gateway and have their standard AVS, CCV checks in place. What do you guys think is best to do out of the gates so that I'm not limiting my potential income by shutting off anyone outside the states?
In my experience it is best not to accept foreign orders unless you have a very firm grasp of how not to get burned. Authnet also has their AFDS which can help reduce fraud quite a bit, again provided that you understand how to use it properly. Also, AVS is only supported in the US, so if you do allow international, it's completely useless. If you're going to do it, probably best to start with Canada, and then UK, Australia, and then expand to other "safer" countries. I don't want to degrade any particular country, but I would be very reluctant to ship anywhere in Africa, Eastern Europe, and most of Asia under any circumstance. There's just too much risk, and absolutely no recourse if someone defrauds you. Also make sure you understand any legal and tax related regulations before you allow ordering from any particular country. Some require you as a seller to comply with certain taxes and procedures.
I saw the Auth.net AFDS suite but wasn't sure how powerful or worthwhile it is. I will definitely check it out. Good point re: taking payment from a select set of countries. In my experience most of our fraudulent orders at past clients came from Africa, E. Europe and the middle east. Thanks for the input!
So do you suggest I limit orders based on where they're getting shipped to but allow Credit Cards issued from any country to order, so long as the shipping address is US-based? What about PayPal accounts, which can obviously be from anywhere (in terms of where they're eventually billed to).