I get so annoyed when I hear the banks and card companies say how they protect their customers - yet it is me who pays for a charge back; every time.
 
It may be the market we are in, or that we have some desirable and easy-to-trade-on products; but at times over past years we have had hundreds of £stg losses.
 
We sell in all, and only, EU countries.
 
We never have a problem with customers from France, Germany or Scandinavian countries - for these countries we normally accept the order of any size. And Spain is generally good.
 
We have had so many charge backs with orders from Italy and the Netherlands that we no longer accept a card payment for a first order from any customer from either of those countries - if the customer will pay first order by inter-bank credit we will then accept normal payment methods for subsequent orders - about 20% do so and we accept we may lose some. But at least we are no longer conned there.
 
We also:
1 check addresses for large or suspicious UK orders to establish that the buyer is recorded as living at that address. If there is any problem we refund and ask for a bank credit.
2 refuse to deliver to a different address except
--- a business address - sometimes, if feeling wary, we phone the company and discretely determine that the customer works there.
--- where we can get a good reason from the buyer and can establish that s/he is using a card from the invoice address.
 
We are also wary of two or more orders place in a short space of time, particularly if the second is much larger than the first - or quickly repeated orders for the same products.
 
We don't expect to eliminate losses totally but our liability from this problem is now extremely small compared to a year or two ago.
 
I would be interested to know other experiences - how do you minimize the risk of charge backs; do you have any special rules? Or do you just accept all orders no matter the risk?
 
Perhaps someone has some sage advice that would be helpful?
 
Chris

It might be worth adding that we use PayPal Pro to accept credit cards or PayPal Accounts, and we also have 3D secure payments inside our shop.

Hi Chris,
 
I'm sure you are already dialed in on this, but PayPal Pro US version has quite a bit of latitude on how far you can go with address matching etc. -- several layers of options you can require to be just-right especially on international purchases.
 
Are the chargebacks generally for stolen cards?
 
Best wishes for good solutions,
Greg

Mostly the reason given is fraud.