In our virtual world, fraud prevention is more important for nonprofits than ever. Card testing has always been around, but there’s been a marked increase since the pandemic, and it's been seen industry wide. Why? Online donation forms are an appealing target for credit card testers, who make multiple small donations to test whether stolen card information is valid.
This article highlights a few things you can do to protect your forms and a few things we’re doing to help.
Remember: Card testers use public donation forms. If they do target you, no account data is compromised, and they have zero access to your account.
What can you do to deter fraud?
- Actively monitor your transactions for unusual activity and report suspicious patterns.
- If you see something that looks fishy, you should VOID it (if the transaction was made that day) or REFUND it. The sooner you void or refund questionable transactions, the less likely you are to incur chargeback fees.
- Be sure you're signed up for notifications by logging in to your Qgiv account, going to Notifications, and subscribing to the Donation Received notification for each active form.
- We can enable CAPTCHA on all or some of your forms—just contact the Customer Experience Team to activate it.
- You can raise your minimum donation amount in Form Settings to something higher than what card testers are testing with.
- Be careful about disabling address fields on your donation form. When the billing street number and address are not verified along with the zip code and country, there is a higher risk of card testing fraud.
Keep in mind: These are things that may help deter card testers, but these steps won't guarantee you’re fully protected from fraud. Vigilance is key!
What does Qgiv do to deter fraud?
We take fraud seriously and work hard to prevent card testers from taking advantage of you and your organization.
Qgiv has a suite of tools that take into consideration the activity of REAL donors versus fraudulent ones.
We have automated triggers in place that block certain patterns of giving. We also manually review transaction activity regularly to further identify and prevent potentially malicious activity.
Our #1 goal is to keep you safe without stopping legitimate donors from giving. With humans in the mix and testing, this can be tricky, but we hope you always feel safe and secure with Qgiv.
To learn more about how to protect your organization from fraud, check out our blog.