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Address Accuracy

Accuracy of stored addresses is crucial due to their use in:

  • Direct mail campaigns
  • Direct mail communication
  • Payment validations
  • Contextual information for agents

When addresses are captured on the street or over the phone, errors can occur due to poor IT skills, a lack of understanding about data accuracy, or from just being in a noisy, pressured environment. Sometimes, individuals themselves may not know their correct address or can disagree with their official postal address.

This inaccuracy can be particularly damaging due costs associated with returned mail or to the ongoing trust of supporters.

Address verification also plays a critical role in online payment processing, helping to combat fraud through services like the Address Verification Service (AVS) Check, ensuring the address matches the cardholder's details for authorization.

The Process

To address this in an efficient and offline-ready way, we have developed multiple types of address capture forms. These include forms that work online or offline and with or without autocompletion.

Our process, involves a detailed address verification system where when addresses are entered:

  1. Auto populate subsequent fields if possible (from Loqate or our own purchased data sets).
  2. Required fields are highlighted and enforced
  3. For some countries (US, Canada, Australia) the address gets validated by external api (Loqate).
  4. The form is submitted.
  5. This data is then integrated into Evergiving’s own address model.

Terminology

It is important that the right terminology is used when describing any problem that can occur during this process. Autocomplete and autofill are two related but distinct features that can get confused with each other.

  • Autocomplete is a browser feature that suggests possible values for a form field based on previous input or the field's name.
  • Autofill is a browser feature that automatically fills out form fields with it's stored data, such as name, address, email, or credit card number.
  • Autopopulate is when our programming automatically fills in fields from our data set or external api.

Postcode and ZIP Codes

These are codes used by postal services to facilitate the sorting and delivery of mail. The term "ZIP code" is commonly used in the United States, postcode is used in countries like the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. Canada calls them "postal code" while France call them "code postal". Most countries use a numeric value while others like the United Kingdom and Canada can use letters and spaces as well.

Unfortunalty not all countries use these as they are very helpful when getting accurate data to share with the external API and Evergiving's location datasets.

Our Address Model

Our address model caters to the various services we use, each with its own address schema. While services like Melissa and Loqate provide authoritative address verification, not all countries have access to such resources. In those cases, we rely on a mix of form fields and pre-purchased data for cities and postcodes for form prefilling.

The model also includes HTML names for automatic addition of helpful information and suggestions, as well as form field ordering to accommodate different address formats across countries. For example in some countries you've got the building name then number; in others it may be building number and then name.

Upon final validation, captured data is stored in our database, ready for use application-wide.

Viewing within Evergiving

Stored addresses are aligned with different service schemas, like OpenStreetMap, and a consistent schema for our database. This data is displayed in the Pledge View and the Lead View, allowing for interaction, correction, and updates.

Importing

We facilitate the importing of addresses for Leads, overcoming challenges by simplifying the data entry to basic address fields like address one, address two, city, state postcode, country. This data is displayed to call center agents, with a feature allowing address updates. The address checker can send a portion of an address to be verified (typically through Loqate) which updates the entire address based on the API’s return data.

Exporting

Our export functionality is designed for flexibility. So addresses can be exported to destination systems in a range of formats including CSV or API in formats, ranging from simple address structures to more detailed configurations.

Address Verification Services

Loqate is our primary service, effective in countries like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US, the UK, and Ireland. For regions where Loqate is less effective, we use GeoPostcodes and other purchased data to ensure accuracy.

Each country presents unique challenges. Australia and the UK are notably good examples, with the UK having a highly efficient address system allowing us to implement fuzzy logic in correcting input errors.

Address data caching helps offline use, though this is challenging in larger countries with millions of addresses.

Geocoding

We geocode every imported Lead address with Opencage, providing coordinates on the maps to help Agents have better informed interactions with Leads.

After the card passes pre-checks we will send for 1st payment to the payment gateway, they will forward the transaction to the card issuer for approval, the card issuer will check (this list is not definitive but covers standard authorisation checks):

  • card is not restricted (lost/stolen/etc)
  • transaction does not appear fraudulent
  • CVV matches
  • address matches (address verification service - AVS)
  • account has funds for this transaction

Usually a card issuer would not decline a transaction if the address does not match but they will indicate in their response that the address doesn't match; this shifts liability to the merchant/NPO so if it does turn out to be fraudulent you would be liable to reimburse funds and pay a penalty. The risk of fraud is very low in a F2F situation as a fraudster would typically try their card on less secure websites or physical stores where they are harder to trace (gas stations, convenience stores, etc). Most payment gateways offer the option to not complete transactions when the issuer indicates the address does not match to reduce your exposure.