Delivery Address Verification (DAV) - Fraud Library

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Delivery address verification is used to check the consumer’s shipping address to make sure it is a deliverable address.

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If the post office can't recognize the address, you have issues ...

Delivery address verification is used to check the consumer’s shipping address to make sure it is a deliverable address.

How Good Is It? 

The systems used to check addresses are typically the same ones the United States Postal Service uses to deliver mail. So they are good. Remember this service does not check to see if the consumer actually lives at that address, it just verifies that the address exists. The main use for this check is to ensure you don’t have goods returned because the address is not deliverable. But this is also a good way to see if the consumer is using a real address or not.

• Doesn’t validate that the consumer lives at the address, just that the address exists

• Much higher value for digitally delivered goods to make sure the consumer is not giving the merchant a bogus address

• Good for fulfillment, and for issues with lots of returned shipments due to undeliverable addresses

• Some of these services will auto-correct addresses to make sure they work correctly

Considerations When Implementing or Buying This Functionality    

•  Does the service provider support all of the countries required for the merchant’s business?

• Address data changes constantly —how often is the data updated?

• Does the service know all of the actual numbers for post offices boxes or private mail-boxes? Does it capture suites?

• Does the service do address clean up?

• Does their provider give the merchant the following:

• Validates the Incoming Address

• Address Standardization

• ZIP Correction and ZIP+4 Code Appending

• Provides Line of Travel (LOT) Coding

• Delivery Point Bar Coding

• Distinguishes Residential and Business Addresses

• Provides Carrier Route Codes and Carrier

• Advanced Name and Address Parsing

Estimated Costs – For service bureaus you will pay for each transaction. For software services you will pay quarterly or monthly subscription fees for updates.

Alternative Solutions – Get address verification from credit bureaus or consumer authentication services.

Vendors – QAS, Cdyne,DataXLTD,Qualified Address, Infosolve Technologies, Correct Address, Equifax, Citation Software, Globalz, APOK Technology, Untied States Postal Service, Intelligent Search Technology, Experian, CyberSource

How Does it Work?  

The service takes the shipping address information provided and checks to see if the address exists. It checks the street, city, state, zip code and country. Make sure to do the test in real time for the best results. Doing it in real time allows the merchant to immediately ask the consumer to correct the shipping data. For digital goods providers, use the billing address.

Some delivery address verification services will actually attempt to auto correct the address. It will put the zip into five-plus-four, and it will check the numbers and letters on addresses that have multiple units.

How Do I Use the Results? 

If the delivery address verification check fails, make sure to ask the consumer to reconfirm the shipping address.

Building This In-House 

1. Purchase software with address data

2. Create a call to the data to check the address

 Or if a merchant wants to check this manually they can go to the USPS site to check the address as well.

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