Cardinal Commerce offers the verified by visa program and is supported by both storefront and bvcommerce. It’s a service the client subscribes to that helps block fraudulent chargebacks. Say you have a online pc store and you sell someone a pc online. During checkout they’ll be asked for their password for their visa account, once they authenticate this information is sent to the vendor and the vendor is thus assured that should the customer attempt to perform a chargeback on the transaction that the vendor is protected. So what would this stop? Let’s say I sell you a pc from my store, you get it and say ‘hey guess what, I’m not happy with this, I’m not paying for it and I’m not sending it back either.’ Maybe go even further as to say ‘I’m going to tell the bank I never ordered’. Normally, an online merchant has no course of action against the client as online merchants do not share the same level of protection that brick and mortar merchants get. Generally the online merchant will have a tough, uphill battle with the bank to prove that the transaction is in fact fraudulent. Now if the client has Cardinal Commerce, the bank will say look ‘you entered your password when you purchased this product, you were verified, it's you.’ Thus the merchant is protected from a fraudulent transaction. At the same time the merchant isn't the only one protected, the shopper is also protected. Let's say you shop at an online store and purchase something from the store. Unknown to you the merchant uses one of these popular shopping carts that are knowingly vulnerable to SQL injection (yet the developers refuse to issue any updates to these applications or the merchant is left totally unaware that his shopping cart is in fact vulnerable). As a result some clever hacker comes along and gains access to your credit card information and goes on a shopping spree. Granted nowadays the credit card companies are quick to pick up on this, but let's say he tries to check out at a site protected by verified by visa, he's not going to be able to check out because although he's got your card information he doesn't have your VBV password. You as the consumer are also protected. So verified by visa is good for both the merchant and the shopper. These are ofcourse exaggerated examples but hopefully you get an idea of just what this service is and how it's useful. More information on verified by visa as offered by Cardinal commerce and supported by Applied Innovations can be found at: http://www.appliedi.net/newsletter/september_2005/cardinal_commerce/index.html
