Did you know that something as simple as a mistyped address could open you and your customers up to potential fraud?

Fraud can take a huge bite out of your profits, as well as lead to reputation damage and other risks. It takes most companies an average of 14 months to catch on to fraud happening, resulting in average losses of $8,300 a month.

However, you can take steps to reduce fraud, risk, and reputation damage by implementing address verification.

4 Common Types of Address-Related Fraud

1. Commercial Mail Receiving Agency (CMRA) Scams

Criminals use Commercial Mail Receiving Agencies (CMRA) to bilk customers for purchases of misrepresented or nonexistent products and services. Scammers will direct businesses to send payments to CMRA boxes, which they then forward to unknown destinations.

Be cautious of any invoice that seeks payment to PO Boxes or CMRAs. Address validation software can help you flag those types of addresses.

2. eCommerce Fraud

Common types of eCommerce fraud include identity theft, chargeback fraud, triangulation fraud, supplier identity fraud, loyalty or promotion abuse, and more.

Keeping a close eye on address data can help you prevent eCommerce fraud. Look out for orders where the shipping and bill addresses are different, or multiple cards are being used to order goods to the same address. Other red flags include PO box shipping addresses and unexpected foreign addresses.

3. Accounts Payable Fraud

Billing schemes, including ones using shell companies or inactive vendors, are some of the most common types of accounts payable fraud.

Prevent accounts payable fraud by carefully reviewing bank statements, monitoring for duplicate payments, and regularly checking vendor master files to guard against invoices from fraudulent suppliers. Running vendor addresses through address validation can help you catch fake or inactive addresses.

4. Insurance Fraud

According to a study from finder.com, roughly 35 million Americans have lied on an insurance application to get a better rate. Ensure you're receiving accurate data by integrating an address verification API into your quote process and system.

How to Protect Your Customers From Fraud and Prevent Reputation Damage

The 4 common types of address-related fraud we shared above primarily impact businesses. However, bad address data impacts your customers as well.

Consider how much confidential information can be found on a payment invoice—credit card details, business addresses, medical procedures or diagnoses, and other Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Mailing invoices and other important letters to the right address helps ensure that information isn’t falling into the wrong hands.

While keeping your customers safe can help keep your reputation clean, keeping your customers happy will make it sparkle.

In order to do so, you need to actively work to prevent things like misdelivered packages, late technicians, and mail that's constantly lost or delayed. Validating your address data can help you avoid such issues.

You'll also save your customer support reps from wasting time fixing errors, updating customer information in your database, rerouting packages, and giving directions to your field team.

Business Benefits of Reducing Fraud, Risk, and Reputation Damage

Improve your bottom line by using address validation software to avoid CMRA scams and accounts payable fraud by flagging and investigating commercial mail receiving agency addresses, PO Box addresses, and inactive or fake vendor addresses. You’ll also increase your chances of catching address-related eCommerce fraud red flags and preventing insurance fraud by verifying address info submitted for quotes.

Finally, when you protect your customers from fraud and ensure that their mail, packages, and service technicians all arrive—at the right place at the right time—you build a loyal customer base and a stellar reputation. That’s an investment that pays off big in the long run.

Download our ebook, 5 Ways Companies Use Address Verification to Improve Business Results, to learn more about reducing fraud, risk, and reputation damage, plus discover four other ways to use address verification to help your business succeed.