"the seller requires a verified address - please register a credit card"

[demby]

I  recently tried to purchase something from meritline.com which is a Hong Kong online retailer. When I wnt to make payment  by paypal, I was directed to a page in Paypal's website asking me to register a credit card as "address verification."

I  confess I  find the logic of this a bit hard to understand, as I thought that among of the  advantages of Paypal were that it pays the seller immediately, in more or less a virtual analog of  cash up front, while protecting one's credit info from exposure.  Why would the seller need address verification, if they have received payment already - the shipment could be dumped in the ocean after that and it would be no skin off their nose.

How does registering a credit card even verify one's address, for that matter?  One can apply for a credit card  using any address, as long as one can receive the correspondence of the issuer, but more importantly, how is this procedure any different, from a personal security standpoint, than just using a credit card for payment?

 I have bought stuff from this company in the past without encountering this requirement, and have had no complaints about them, but I canceled out of the transaction because the rationale for this seems so questionable. Am I missing something here?

[PayPal_Andy · Accepted solution]

demby- You're raising legitimate questions, so let me try and help you understand where this is coming from.  Some merchants can choose to only accept payments from customers that have confirmed addresses.  In the past, seller's were only covered for Seller Protection by sending to confirmed addresses.  We have since removed that portion of the requirements, but some merchants still prefer that option (and you might be surprised at some of the big name merchants in the US that still require it).  If you ordered from this merchant in the past and they didn't require this, the question I would ask is if this is a different address than previously?  If so, then your last address may have been confirmed.

As far as how adding and confirming a credit card confirms your address, that's an easy one! 🙂  When you add the card, our system checks that address against what's on your PayPal account.  If they match and you complete the linking process, then your address should be confirmed (should be because we've had some....issues...with that. But we're working on it).  And I think you'd be surprised at what gets confirmed when you apply for a credit card; adding any address doesn't necessarily work and probably won't get you a credit card. 🙂

Hope that answers your questions.

Andy

[demby]

OK, I will have to read more about the seller's security concerns to undertand this, but I'm relieved to know there is apparently  nothing sinister in the address verification requirement i.e. not a phishing attempt.

It still seems to have risk for the buyer, in that the CC info has to be typed in and sent to Paypal.  Can you say with certainty  whether the info is retained by Paypal after being used to verify the address, or is it deleted?

I'm beginning to think there is really no secure means of doing commerce at the present time.  At any rate, thanks for the response, I'll mark this question as resolved.

[dbkyla]

This gets scarier by the minute!