Why does Amazon ask for the CVC/CVV if it bills without it?

Question

I have a follow-up question relating to this question:

How does Amazon bill me without the CVC / CVV / CVV2?

If amazon.com can bill without the CVV why does it ask for it the first time information is entered? Maybe they just silently discard it? Maybe the first transaction you ever do utilizes your CVV but subsequent ones don't?

I was looking at the specs for a particular payment gateway and one thought I had based on that was that maybe amazon.com could be doing a pre-auth for $0.00, with the CVV / CC#, getting a transaction ID for that and then passing the transaction ID to the payment gateway on all subsequent calls, charging a different amount each time?

Answer 1

Anybody can charge cards without CVV - it may require some negotiation or arrangements with your merchant account people, but it can be done. It can also be done without a valid expiration date. If you have a good track record (no or low chargebacks) it's rather easy to do.

If you run a charge without CVV or exp date, (or without AVS info) you are processing a 'riskier' transaction and will pay a higher processing rate for that transaction.

Answer 2

TylerL already answered this on the related question; when you add a new credit card to your account, they ask for the code once to confirm that the card is physically present in the moment of adding.

This gives them a little more confidence that the card is legit, but still lets them offer one-click purchasing, etc.

Answer 3

Folks who process this huge volume of transactions have direct access to the CC network risk people - so a guess that the CVV is used once for an authonly at card intake time then discarded (as it should be, since it's 'illegal' to store it) is a very good guess.

Once the CVV has been checked once, risk after that is very, very low.