Problem verifying Bank of America cards

Ordinarily if we need to verify the contact information for a customer such as phone number and the name of the card holder we can simply call up the card issuing bank, provide our Visa merchant number, and get a non-descript yes/no response to the accuracy of the information we already have.

Not with Bank of America. They offer NO way to verify that the customer who placed an order with us is the actual card holder or if the contact information we have been supplied is valid. They state that this is done for security purposes due to an apparently overbearing privacy policy.

It would be understandable if we were asking for the actual information or if we didn't have legitimate verifiable credentials. We have contacted dozens of banks to verify card holder data but Bank of America is the only one so far that limits their fraud checking services to verifying if an account holder wrote a valid check.

Visa Merchant Services does not actually have access to such information the way American Express and Discover Merchant Services do.

Does anyone know a way around this? Any phone number with Bank of America that can be called to speak with someone that can actually validate the credit card contact information we have on file?

Thanks!

Problems I see: first you're doing this over the phone. Second, BofA is probably going to try to sell you into some Verified by Visa merchant "service"

As it stands today the Customer Service Policy stipulates that they will share customer information with companies that process a payment for goods/services. This would, presumably, be you. However, if your actual payment is collected by a third party, it's no longer you. This may be another hurdle for you.

Also because of the presence of BofA in states such as California, you may be running into state regulations in trying to simply phone up a verification.

There are a number of contact resources on the BofA website.

We already have automated fraud verification services through MaxMind and Authorize.Net. However, some orders need to have their billing phone numbers verified due to the fact that some orders come in from thousands of miles away from their billing address, from a black-listed IP, with a cellphone in another state given in their contact information, and a delivery destination that needs to first be verified with the legitimate card holder verbally if the phone number supplied belongs to that card holder.

So far we've not had any problems just calling a bank up to request verification of the phone number or to make sure the credit card account hasn't had any fraudulent activity reported on it in the 24 hours or less since the order was placed.


Based on what you are saying, does Authorize.Net count as a third party that collects payment? We actually receive the transaction details and manually okay the charge for each and every order, so Authorize.Net does not finish the processing until we say so. Even Amazon.com doesn't do their own credit card processing. An actual bank or bank authorized card processor handles the transaction shuffling behind the scenes, at least to my knowledge.

I have tried these but unfortunately I can only find check verification phone numbers. Perhaps I am looking in the wrong place. If you can point me to a page with the information I would be more than happy to look it over.

Must you use phone number? Because the way most automated systems work now it's the numerical part of the address plus the zip. So if your customer were at 1055 Ballpark Ave 94107 you would verify 105594107.

Banks are getting a lot of slack for privacy matters (I work for one, not BofA though) and as much as you wish to verify you aren't placing an order on a stolen card, at the other end consumers are demanding more and more security over their information.

Further, in the age of cell phones, work phone, home phone, etc. most people have multiple phones so verifying a phone number is not the best.

For the above reasons most companies verify the billing address, not phone number.

However I am not qualified to elaborate any more on this.

What numbers did you dial? Did you ask the operator you spoke to if they could give you the number for a cc verification line? I'd try the number on the back of the card first: 1.800.622.8731

I thinking I mis-explained our reasoning. We do not verify orders based on phone numbers. We verify them based on billing address. Ordinarily, if the customer wishes to ship to an address other than their billing address then there is no problem. However, if there are other indicators that flag the order as potentially fraudulent then we go the extra mile and try to contact the card holder directly to make sure they authorized the purchase.

In fact, we have had some instances in which fraudulent orders had come through and were to be shipped to the customer's billing address when in fact the customer had reported their card lost or stolen a few hours after the order was placed. This would be an instance in which the fraudster was simply testing out the stolen card and didn't care where the order they submitted to us went. Had we not contacted the card issuing bank to make sure on such occasions then we'd be out thousands of dollars due to the chargeback that would later result.


Online merchants don't just get flak for filling a fraudulent order...they can loose their ability to fill orders altogether if they rack up enough chargebacks. We'd like to keep ours at zero.


No problem if they want to submit a phone number other than that associated with their billing address. We get that from university dorm students and business employees frequently. It is only when the rest of the order looks very suspcious that we have to take the verification up a level.


Tried that. Also tried the one on the back of my own card. Tried the BoA merchant services department.

Due to the fact that we have never had such an issue with verification with any other bank I am still wondering if perhaps we are just asking the wrong questions of them or if we simply haven't called the correct service department.

Is this a Visa or Mastercard? I have two BofA'a Visa's myself and the verification number is different for both.

For Visa: 1-800-847-2750 press 2 and then the account number followed by the # sign

For Mastercard: 1-800-622-7747. Press 1 for English. Press 2 for merchant. Wait and then enter the account number. Press 1 if it is correct and then 1 for the phone number.

Thanks! I will see about trying those two numbers next time we are faced with this. Fortunately we haven't had any fishy orders from BoA card users as of late.