Let’s examine the anatomy of a credit card number and look at two ways to use the BIN: a) to thwart installment fraud and b) to increase average order value by using card type to dynamically control upsells/cross sells and general Web site merchandising. I regularly work with merchants requesting a way to block stored-value cards (a type of prepaid debit card), especially for installment payments. Stored-value cards are the type purchased at almost any store these days. They’re everywhere. These cards have nothing identifying the cardholder. Prepaid debit cards are a wee bit different. They are usually issued in the name of individual account holder and there is a record of deposit. A prepaid debit card is frequently used by students or young adults. Prepaid and stored-value cards have limited funds and can easily be used to defraud merchants. Both cause problems for the merchant who has a recurring billing or an installment purchase option when there is no money left on the account and the customer already has the goods or services. The best solution is to block the use of these card types.

This post is about some recent up-sell and cross-sell learning. Up-selling is a sales technique whereby a website attempts to have the customer purchase more expensive items, upgrades, or other add-ons in an attempt to make a more profitable sale. Up-selling implies selling something that is more profitable or preferable for the seller instead of the original sale. A different technique called cross-selling tries to sell something else in addition to the original sale. Amazon.com has shared that cross-sells were responsible for 35% of its sales in 2006! According to the 2009 e-tailing group's survey of 190 large e-commerce executives, 55% of retailers will include cross-selling and up-selling in their merchandising activities this year.