If you run an at home e- commerce business ,one of the risks you run every day is falling victim to credit card fraud.  When you accept online credit cards transactions you have no physical card to swipe, no customer to look in the face or signature to review. In short you have very few ways of knowing if the person making the purchase has the right to be using this credit card at all. Unfortunately banks canl hold you responsible for these charges, even if they approved them.

So what can a home business owner do to cut down the risk that they fall victim to credit card fraud? It would be easy to say do not accept them at all, but online shopping is all about convenience so your customers will expect you to.

One way to protect yourself is to perform an address verification on all credit card orders. If the addresses do not match, the order does not go through; it is as simple as that. It may just be that the cardholder has moved and forgotten to change addresses with their bank, but better safe than sorry.

Be on the lookout for unusually high dollar purchases, or multiple purchases in a short period of time. Ask for a phone number with all credit card orders so that you can call the buyer and verify the purchase if something seems suspicious.

Requiring email verification can help too. Don’t process an order until an e mail is verified. If the email bounces it may just simply be because of a typo , but again it pays to be vigilant.

Some e-commerce sites prefer to use PayPal rather than accept credit cards directly, as PayPal does offer merchants a little more protection. PayPal accounts are funded by credit cards and bank accounts that have already been verified by PayPal staff and merchants are not usually held responsible for the fraudulent use of PayPal accounts.