Elavon • Article • U.S. Payment Smart (May 2024)
3 min. Read
Last Updated: 05/02/2024

Ecommerce attacks are on the rise across the payments industry, regardless of which card not present products merchants use. Our operations team is seeing a spike in authorization testing attacks, in which fraudsters attempt to test stolen payment card numbers with a small online purchase to see if it will be authorized.

Since every transaction has an authorization cost, this fraudulent activity can cost your business money and put it at risk of chargebacks.

Converge users can set up fraud prevention rules to help further reduce risk. You can find a guide for setting these up here.

Helpful prevention measures include: 

1. Set hourly or daily velocity limits within your payment acceptance platform and monitor for large groups of transactions within a small period of time. 
2. If you use an outside vendor to develop your eCommerce website, ensure no HTML source code is left exposed or accessible. 
3. Require more than card information for payment authorization. Include pay fields for email address, phone number and cardholder address. 
4. Scan systems for malware or spyware regularly. 
5. Consider employing some of these common fraud deterrent tools: 
   • Firewalls – These are network security systems that monitor and control incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predetermined security rules and transaction parameters. 
   • CAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA – A program or system aimed at distinguishing human input from bots with images.
   • Honeypots- These are decoy systems that operate alongside production systems that lure in fraudsters. 
   • Device fingerprinting – Helps identify bots with technology that detects the originating device. 
   •  Key stroke recognition – Another biometric tool that uses the unique manner in which an individual types to recognize them as human and not a bot.

Be aware. In the event of suspicious activity an Elavon software security representative will contact you via email with further instructions to contact software support. If you suspect suspicious activity on your website or Converge, contact Elavon Converge support at 1-800-377-3962 (option 2, option 2).

Emails from Elavon representatives will always be sent from Elavon.com. If you receive a communication you are unsure about, you can verify the legitimacy by contacting Customer Care at 1-866-310-3345. Again, when in doubt, reach out and contact Customer Care directly. Together we can help prevent fraud.

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