How to Prevent Credit Card Scammers in WooCommerce

If your WooCommerce store has many failed orders with similar shipping and billing addresses, you might be a victim of credit card washing scam.

Credit card washing is one of the growing threats in e-commerce. This is a fraudulent practice where scammers attempt to make online purchases with stolen credit card information.

This article will discuss what a credit card washing scam is and how to protect your WooCommerce store from one.

Understanding Credit Card Washing

Credit card washing is a scam where scammers check if stolen credit card info is real. Scammers also call it card testing or card cracking.

Here’s how it typically works:

1. Obtaining Stolen Card Data: Scammers get stolen card info from data breaches or the dark web.
2. Testing for Validity: They use the stolen info to buy small things online, like on WooCommerce websites.
3. Changing Card Details: If a small payment is successful, the scammer may modify the card info to hide the fraud.
4. Reselling Valid Data: Scammers will now have a list of real credit card numbers. They can use them for fraud or sell them to other criminals.

Protecting your WooCommerce store from credit card-washing scammers is crucial to safeguard your business’s reputation.

Let us look at one of the methods you can implement on your online store to this scam.

Video: How to Prevent Credit Card Scams in Woocommerce

Watch the video on How to prevent fake orders and credit card scammers in Woocommerce.

Steps to prevent credit card washing in Woocommerce

Here is how we prevent credit card washing in your Woocommerce store.

• Go to WooCommerce settings

Log into your WordPress Admin dashboard and access your woocommerce settings.

• Go to Accounts and Privacy Tab

Inside the Woocommerce settings, switch to the Accounts &Privacy tab as seen below.

• Under this section, adjust the Guest checkout and Account creation settings as seen in the image above.
  1. Uncheck the option that allows customers to place orders without having an account on your site.
  2. The second setting will allow your customers to log into an existing account during the checkout process.
  3. In the 3rd step, uncheck the option that prevents customers from creating accounts during the checkout process.
  4. Checking option 4 will allow your customers to create accounts from the “My account” page.
  5. In step 5, we permit WooCommerce to create a suitable username for customers when creating accounts. Woocomerce will send this username to the new customer’s email address.
  6. Option 6 tells Woocommerce to send a link to a user’s new email from which they can set a password for their account.

How the The New Settings Prevent card testing

The new Guest checkout and Account creation settings to your Woocommerce will ensure the following;

1. No placing orders without an account: Customers must create an account before ordering on your site.

This prevents the credit card scammers from making fraudulent transactions on your site without having an account.

2. New customers must verify their email addresses during account creation. Woocommerce will send username and password details to the provided email.

Credit card scammers often use fake email addresses to place orders. To prevent this, users must verify their email addresses before ordering on the site.

Conclusion

This article and video tutorial give a useful way to stop credit card scammers from targeting your WooCommerce store.

Adjust your WooCommerce settings in the “Accounts and Privacy” tab to make customers create accounts before placing orders.

These change makes it harder for scammers to do fraud by requiring all users to have verified email addresses.