Overview
Every day, the number of purchases conducted via mail, telephone, and internet increases. These transactions are significantly different from traditional in-store sales, in that neither the customer nor the credit card are present at the merchant location during the transaction, making it especially difficult to detect fraud.
Of necessity, card acceptance procedures for these “card-not-present” transactions are different from in-store, i.e. "card present" purchases. UCSC employees who conduct card-not-present transactions must exercise extreme caution and follow procedures precisely in order to verify — to the greatest extent possible — the cardholder’s identity and the validity of the purchase.
Many credit card processors require card-not-present merchants to ask customers for their Card Verification Value 2 (CVV2) number as an additional security measure. See: Security rules for additional information on CVV2 requirements.
This section covers basic card acceptance procedures for mail, telephone, and internet transactions. It also includes resources and best practices that all card-not-present merchants can use to prevent fraud and chargebacks.