What happens when a merchant requires address verification in another country?

AVS is standard in the U.S. and supported by some issuers and acquirers in other countries, but coverage is not universal. When AVS isn’t supported for a given card or market, processors often return an “unsupported,” “unavailable,” or “international” response.

Merchants then decide whether to approve the transaction using other fraud signals or to block it. This can result in declines for legitimate international cardholders even when payment details are correct.

How address verification works

AVS compares the billing address a customer enters at checkout against the address on file with their card issuer. The system returns a match result (full match, partial match, no match, or unavailable) that merchants use to assess risk.

AVS was designed for standardized North American address formats and does not support most international address structures, which may include different postal code formats, non-Latin characters, or address elements like building names and floor numbers.

Common scenarios with international transactions

Transaction from an unsupported country
If the cardholder's billing address is in a country where AVS is not available, the verification returns an "international" or "unavailable" code. The merchant cannot confirm the address matches and must decide whether to approve the transaction based on other signals.

Address format mismatch
Even in supported countries, customers may enter their address differently than it appears in their bank’s records—using abbreviations, alternate spellings, or local formatting conventions. This can trigger a mismatch and lead to a decline if rules are strict.

Legitimate customer declined
Merchants with strict address verification rules may automatically decline international transactions that cannot be verified, resulting in false declines that frustrate legitimate customers and lead to lost sales.

How merchants typically handle international AVS

Merchants accepting global payments often:

• Allow transactions to proceed without AVS when unsupported, relying instead on fraud tools like CVV, device fingerprinting, behavioral analytics, velocity rules, and 3DS.
• Manually review high-risk or unclear international transactions.
• Use regional verification methods offered by processors for specific markets.
• Apply less rigid AVS rules for international traffic while keeping stricter controls domestically.

Best practices for international payments

• Tell customers that their billing address must match their bank records as closely as possible.
• Provide guidance on correct address formatting for international markets.
• Review ambiguous international transactions manually instead of relying solely on automated rules.
• Use AVS as one input in a layered fraud-prevention strategy rather than a standalone decision factor.
• Track false decline rates by country to identify overly restrictive rules.

Note: Ramp does not force AVS-based declines. AVS checks are initiated and evaluated by the merchant’s gateway, processor, or acquirer. Networks simply return AVS result codes; merchants determine whether to approve, soft-decline, or hard-decline the transaction. In practice, most AVS-related declines at checkout are merchant-configured decisions, not network- or issuer-mandated blocks.