What does AVS check:
– AVS verifies that the billing address entered by the customer is the same as the one associated with the cardholder’s account:
AVS checks the street number the user entered against the street number at the issuing bank. AVS will return the result: PASS, FAIL, and UNCHECKED. Unchecked means the bank does not support this feature.
– In general, though, if you ship a product to an address that did not pass AVS verification, you will be liable for any fraud that could potentially take place on such an order. Credit Card companies (including PayPal or whoever) are not going to cover you if you don’t ship to verified/confirmed addresses.
– For US cards, your “UNCHECKED” responses will almost entirely be stored balance cards (i.e. prepaid debit cards or gift cards). But even among stored balance cards, it’s not uncommon to simply return an AVS Pass for any address. As mentioned above, non-pass results make merchants all itchy.