Tier countries by your own dispute data, not stereotypes. AVS barely works outside the US/UK/Canada, so international screening leans on different signals: IP-country vs shipping-country match, card-issuing-country alignment, email age, and delivery-confirmation strength per destination. Tier 1 ships freely, tier 2 gets signature confirmation, tier 3 gets verify-first. Review the tiers quarterly against actual chargeback outcomes.
Signals that work abroad
AVS returns 'unavailable' for most non-US cards, so weight what still functions:
- Triangle check: card-issuing country vs IP country vs shipping country. All three matching = strong positive. Card from country A, IP in B, shipping to C = the classic reshipping pattern.
- CVV — works globally; a mismatch abroad matters more because AVS can't corroborate.
- Carrier strength by destination: some postal systems provide delivery confirmation with signature; others lose packages routinely. Your not-received dispute risk is partly the destination's infrastructure.
- Your own outcome data — the only reliable country ranking is your own chargebacks ÷ orders per destination.
The 3-tier system
- Tier 1 (your clean-history destinations): fulfill normally, standard tracking.
- Tier 2 (elevated): require signature confirmation, cap order value for first-time customers, no expedited shipping on first order.
- Tier 3 (your dispute hotspots): verify-first via email/SMS, prepaid/virtual-card decline rules, or checkout exclusion if the math is hopeless.
Assign by your data, revisit quarterly. A market that burned you at 10 orders may be fine at 1,000 with signature confirmation.
Cross-border dispute notes
International disputes follow the same network rules — but evidence needs adjusting: foreign-carrier tracking pages should be captured as screenshots (issuer analysts won't navigate a Korean postal site), and delivery standards vary by country in network rules.
Note Shopify Protect excludes international orders entirely, so representment is the only recovery path. Aurai handles foreign-carrier evidence capture automatically — tracking screenshots, translated status, delivery confirmation — the fiddly part of cross-border defense.
Frequently asked questions
Should I block high-fraud countries at checkout?
Only tier-3 destinations where your own data shows unfixable loss rates. Blanket country blocks kill more revenue than fraud — signature confirmation and verify-first rescue most elevated-risk markets.
Does AVS work internationally?
Barely — full AVS is essentially US/UK/Canada. International screening leans on CVV, the country-triangle check, and destination-specific delivery confirmation instead.
Post reflects public documentation, industry surveys, and Aurai's own book of disputes as of the publish date. Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, Stripe, PayPal, and Shopify are trademarks of their respective owners; Aurai is independent and not endorsed by any of them. Network rules change — always verify current official rules before acting on any specific tactic.