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Question: What is the
credit card verification code? Why is this of such importance?
Answer: A
so-called 'card-verification value' (Visa terminology: CVV2) or
'card-verification code' (MasterCard terminology: CVC2) has been
added to the rear of the card to help improve security
for the consumer when buying something via mail, telephone
and internet order, when the credit card is not physically
presented to the merchant. The value can be found in the signature
field, following the printed replica of the credit card number
embossed on the front of the plastic. The value is only printed
and is not contained in the magnetic-stripe data (in the case of
American Express cards, the CVV2 is a 4-digit value is to be found
half way down the right-hand side of the front of the card).
The CVV2 can be found as follows:
Visa® and MasterCard®
American Express®
In 2001, the credit-card
organizations instructed merchants to request the card-verification
value and forward it to their acquirer (in this case All Shoes and
Boots, or ePed, Inc.).
Consequences:
As a result of the above-mentioned
demands, each merchant accepting credit-card based mail, telephone and
internet orders must now request cardholders to disclose the
card-verification value and forward it to the settlement center. In
short, merchants must ask for the card-verification values, and their
payment systems (terminal, software, provider) must be capable of
processing (i.e. forwarding) the additional information.
In practice, this means that whenever merchants request customers to
provide their card details - regardless of whether in catalogues,
advertisements, web-sites, or wherever the merchant's goods and services
are offered - they must obtain the card-verification value and forward
it in the transaction data.
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