AVS is not available by all credit card providers, and not in all countries. It is generally not available for foreign credit cards; that is, cards issued in a country other than where it is being used. AVS is available in a number of countries, including the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Though the checks can vary between card companies, AVS typically verifies only the numeric portions of a cardholder's billing address, resulting in certain anomalies like apartment numbers, which can cause false declines. However, this is reported to be a rare occurrence.[citation needed] For example, if the address is 101 Main Street, Highland, CA 92346, in the United States, AVS will check 101 and 92346. Cardholders may receive false negatives, or partial declines for AVS from e-commerce verification systems, which may require manual overrides, voice authorization, or reprogramming of the AVS entries by the card issuing bank. Credit card AVS does not determine deliverability of an address.
AVS support
AVS is a service to combat fraudulent activity for non-face-to-face transactions by cross-referencing the address provided by a cardholder to a merchant with the card issuer's records. AVS is offered by Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.Cardholders with a bank that does not support AVS may receive an error from online stores due to the lack of verification.
Besides the automated verification, some banks provide merchants with a manual verification system. Usually this is done for foreign credit card accounts as the AVS only works in the same country. This facility helps the merchants to prevent fraud arising from other countries. The merchant's bank calls the customer's bank (or sends a fax for banks that request them).