AVS helps ensure that the person making the purchase with their Visa card is the same person who receives the Visa card’s monthly statement. By matching the billing address your Visa card issuer has on file against the billing address you provide during check-out, merchants and issuers work together to help ensure that lost or stolen Visa cards are not being used in card-not-present environments to purchase goods or services.

For cardholders, AVS means that unless the correct billing address is provided to the online, mail or telephone merchant during check-out, the transaction will not be completed which may stop a fraudulent purchase from being made.