Value of passing CVV in creating customer payment profile?

[begeland]

If I understand correctly, I can pass the CVV when creating a customer payment profile, but that code is not stored in the profile. When making a charge to that profile, I can collect the CVV again from the customer and pass it along, but there is no way to store the CVV, either in the payment profile or my own server, in order to pass it along automatically (we have an auto-billing scenario, but aren't using recurring payments).

My question is, what is the value of capturing that CVV to create the profile? Is it just to enhance the chance that it will be successful in creating the profile? Is there any financial value (e.g., lower rate) to the merchant by using a profile that was created with a CVV?

Thank you.

[Aaron · Accepted solution]

Hi @begeland,

Rates are dependent on your merchant service provider, but I'm not aware of any way to get a lower rate on a subsequent transaction if the first one was done with CVV2/CVC2 validation.

What you will get is a possibly lower chance of chargebacks on the subsequent transactions since you are more sure that the card was actually in the cardholder's hands at the time they gave you the card number. That's really the value in submitting it on creation. If you get back a match on the code, you know the cardholder must have had physical access to the card to get that code.

On subsequent transactions, if they're done on-demand and interactively (like the customer choosing a stored card at checkout from a shopping site), you can ask for the card code again and submit that with the transaction. The transaction itself will be referencing the payment profile instead of a card number for payment, but if you submit the card code alongside, that will be present in the authorization request to the issuing bank.

[3Dmerchant]

CVV never impacts qualified rates; it's used for security purposes only. Once it's been validated for a card it's not needed again for subsequent transactions.

October 2017 Visa rules require that merchants storing credit cards must either validate the card number with CVV or 3D Secure on the first transaction or zero dollar authorization. Additionally, a reference # from that transaction must be submitted with all subsequent transactions, essentially tying the record of both customer opt-in to storing and for passing validation to all future transactions.