You can process any payment card with a major card brand’s logo as if it were a credit card . However, merchants accepting gift cards and other prepaid payment cards may experience an Address Verification Service (AVS) decline based on a default setting for their Payment Gateway account.
AVS allows merchants to validate the customer’s billing address before accepting a credit card transaction. However, for prepaid cards, the actual customer’s billing address often will not be associated with the gift card, or will not exist on file at the issuing bank. With the default payment gateway AVS settings in place, this may result in a rejected transaction.
To allow for the smooth processing of prepaid cards, please take the following steps to turn off the appropriate default payment gateway setting:
- Log into your Merchant Interface.
- Click Account from the main toolbar.
- Click Settings in the left side main menu.
- Click Address Verification Service under the Security Settings header.
- Click to deselect the checkbox labeled “Address Information for cardholder is unavailable (U)”.
- Click Submit.
Your AVS settings are now updated to allow the processing of prepaid card purchases with unavailable address information.