The rise of online shopping has made it easier than ever to expand your customer base and encourage more purchases through a convenient platform, but it has also ushered in a new era of fraud. Whether you run a small local business or a multinational corporation, it’s important to have systems in place to block fraudulent actors from buying your products with stolen credit card numbers. Credit card CVV codes are an important tool to help your business prevent fraudulent charges and lost revenue. Overall, the value of ecommerce fraud was an estimated $44.3 billion in 2024.

Businesses rely on credit card CVV codes to ensure purchases are valid and prevent customer disputes. Here’s what you should know to start verifying purchases with CVV codes.

What’s in this article?

• What does CVV stand for?
  
• What is a card verification value (CVV)?
  
• Where is the CVV located on a credit or debit card?
  
• How do CVV codes work?
  
• How CVV codes help protect businesses against fraud
  
• How Stripe Radar can help
  

What does CVV stand for?

CVV stands for card verification value, and is sometimes referred to as CVC (card verification code) or CSC (card security code). ​​American Express differentiates its verification codes by calling them CID (card identification numbers).

What is a card verification value (CVV)?

All credit and debit cards have CVVs to help prevent fraud. A credit card CVV code is a three- or four-digit number that businesses use to authenticate a card (along with the credit card number and expiration date) when a customer makes a purchase. CVV codes prove a card’s validity and make it more difficult for fraudulent actors and hackers to use stolen credit card numbers. CVV codes are typically three-digit sequences, with the exception of ​​American Express cards, which use a four-digit sequence. Some financial institutions are experimenting with dynamic CVV codes that replace the static number with one that changes periodically and can be accessed through an app rather than via a physical card, but those are not yet common. To avoid being victimized by scammers, cardholders should treat their CVV codes the same way they treat their account numbers and card numbers—keeping them secure and sharing them only if necessary.

Where can you find the CVV on a credit or debit card?

For most credit and debit cards, the CVV code is printed on the back of the card near the signature panel. The CVV codes for Visa, Mastercard, and Discover credit cards are three-digit numbers on the back of a card, to the right of the signature box.​​ American Express cards differ slightly: their four-digit code can be found on the front of the card. Because a credit card CVV code is not part of the credit card number, it’s located in a different area of the physical card.

How do CVV codes work?

A CVV code functions as an extra security measure for transactions. When a customer makes a purchase online or over the phone, the credit card CVV number must be verified to make sure the transaction is authorized. Payment processing software like Stripe Radar, a machine learning–based fraud prevention solution that’s integrated within the Stripe platform, will block any payments that fail the CVV verification check. If you enable your Stripe Dashboard to collect the CVV, postal code, and billing street address for each card at checkout, Stripe provides that information to a card network for verification. The card issuer then checks the information against the details it has on file for the authorized cardholder. If the information doesn’t match, the verification check will fail and the purchase won’t go through. You can perform CVV verification by providing the CVV code either when you create a payment with a new card payment method, or when you attach a new card payment method to a customer.

For instance, if someone steals a credit card number and tries to buy something from your online shop, they won’t be able to complete the purchase with only the credit card number and expiration date. Unfortunately, if a thief steals a physical card, they will have access to the CVV.

How CVV codes help protect businesses against fraud

Credit and debit card CVV codes stop fraudulent charges before they happen. Ecommerce losses from fraud are projected to hit $107 billion in 2029, and the total cost to businesses is even higher, due to increased operational costs and network fees. Integrating CVV verification into your checkout flow is an important part of protecting your business from fraudulent payments and avoiding chargeback fees.

Verify the card

CVV codes prevent fraud by verifying a credit or debit card before a payment can be processed. If your business sells products in person, using EMV-certified card readers—such as Stripe’s precertified payment readers that work with Stripe Terminal—makes it simple to verify payments. For online shops, tools such as Stripe Checkout provide real-time card validation to ensure the authorized cardholder is the person making the purchase. The key is to use a software that seamlessly integrates CVV code verification, without disrupting the flow or prolonging the checkout process.

Prevent customer disputes

When a fraudulent actor uses someone else’s credit card details to make a purchase, the situation can cause major problems for the business. While the account owner typically receives a refund for the fraudulent charge, the business owner loses revenue, has to write off the cost of the lost products, and often must pay a chargeback fee to the payment processor. Additionally, racking up a long list of disputes can lead to bigger problems down the line. If your business is placed on a network chargeback monitoring program due to a high volume of chargebacks, you can incur higher costs from your payment processor and, in some cases, be banned from accepting card payments altogether.

Businesses must do everything in their power to prevent disputes and fraudulent charges without making the checkout process difficult for customers or turning away legitimate transactions. More than 4 in 10 customers say they would never shop with an online business again if they experienced a false decline. Fraud detection tools such as Stripe Radar prevent fraudulent payments before they go through without driving away real customers, saving your business time and money.

Protect against hackers

Card issuers don’t allow businesses to store credit card CVV numbers in transaction databases, making them difficult for hackers to steal. Even if hackers are able to infiltrate a business database or website and steal credit card numbers and expiration dates, they won’t retrieve any CVV numbers. While this doesn’t prevent fraudulent actors who steal physical credit cards from making purchases, the added protection makes hacking schemes less harmful to business owners and cardholders.

Using card and CVV code verification can make a big difference in preventing disputed payments. Stripe Radar’s advanced machine learning, which verifies CVV codes, is available to every Stripe account. To better understand how Stripe Radar uses machine learning to evaluate every transaction for fraud prevention, learn more here.

How Stripe Radar can help

Stripe Radar trains AI models to detect and prevent fraud, using data from the global Stripe network. It continuously updates these models based on the latest fraud trends, protecting your business as fraud evolves.

Stripe also offers Radar for Fraud Teams, which allows users to add custom rules addressing fraud scenarios specific to their businesses and access advanced fraud insights.
Radar can help your business:

• Prevent fraud losses: Stripe processes over $1 trillion in payments annually. This scale uniquely enables Radar to accurately detect and prevent fraud, saving you money.
  
• Increase revenue: Radar’s AI models are trained on actual dispute data, customer information, browsing data, and more. This enables Radar to identify risky transactions and reduce false positives, boosting your revenue.
  
• Save time: Radar is built into Stripe and requires zero lines of code to set up. You can also monitor your fraud performance, write rules, and more in a single platform, increasing efficiency.
  

Learn more about Stripe Radar, or get started today.