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 and industry surveys as of the publish date. Win rates and other figures are indicative ranges, not guarantees and not Aurai results; outcomes vary by merchant, evidence, and issuer. 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.