Often merchants and businessmen tend to turn away and even refuse outright potential new customers because of the fear of fraud. It is sad because decades ago, fraud incidents are virtually non-existent in the business and marketing world. But over the past years, most merchants have noticed that fraud and attempted fraud incidents have drastically increased. Therefore, most merchants see the necessity to be very careful about all the orders that are coming in.

Some businesses even have to start asking for signature as a requirement for delivery because many have become serious victims of what they call "cyber-shoplifters". These are the supposed customers who actually do chargebacks by making claims that they did not receive the purchased goods or did not make any authorization to purchase. Some merchants go the extent of really proving the fraud by calling and speaking to family members of those who did the chargeback and confessed that they in fact did receive the purchased goods.

Chargebacks and fraud are the reason why many merchants refuse to entertain new and potential customers. Since the address verification system is still not available in many places outside of the United States, merchant will have to require their customers to fax in their ID card and a Xerox company their credit card. Because of this stringent procedure, we have lost a lot of potential customers. On the other hand, because of its implementation, a lot of attempted fraud have been discovered and thwarted.

Most merchants also possess a list of cities and countries that they avoid having any shipment. They also always check and verify the IP address of all international orders. There are instances when they feel that the IP is doubtful; they decide on not shipping the order. To site an example, the IP address is in Japan, the card billing address is in the United States, while the shipping address is to Israel.

With all the cautious and careful practices by the merchants, definitely they are cutting off a big number of potential clients and customers. While there is the possibility of fraud being experienced by merchants from new customers, there is also the chance that there are potential big honest customers whose only intention is to purchase your product, and possibly by the bulk!

A good solution to alleviate the merchants' fear of new customers being possible fraud is to implement the normal security and identification procedures that merchants implement on customers, whether old or new ones. There are tried and tested screenings of potential customers, whether local or international. Simply refusing orders and new clients because of fear of fraud will only do harm than good to the business.