Card-not-present (CNP) transaction
A card payment taken without the card being physically presented to the merchant.
A card-not-present (CNP) transaction is any card payment taken without the physical card being presented, including online purchases, phone bookings, payment links and email-based payments. CNP transactions are higher risk than chip-and-PIN because the merchant cannot rely on the card being physically inspected, so authentication, AVS and fraud checks carry more weight. CNP also carries more chargeback liability for the merchant in most scheme rules.
What it means for travel businesses.
Most travel sales are card-not-present: customers book online, agents key in card details on the phone, deposits and balances are taken via emailed payment links. The CNP risk profile is the reason travel finance teams pay close attention to authentication, fraud signals and chargeback ratios — and why payment links with authentication evidence have largely replaced raw MOTO keying.
CNP transactions in travel carry higher chargeback liability and higher fraud risk than card-present transactions, which is why so much travel-payment design is really about turning CNP into something defensible. Authentication evidence, AVS results, CVC matches and behavioural signals all stack into the picture that decides whether a chargeback survives representment months later.
The travel businesses that handle CNP well treat every transaction as evidence to be preserved — every authentication, every signal, every booking event — so a dispute can be defended from the booking record. The businesses that do not treat CNP as evidence-led accept chargebacks they could have defended, because by the time the dispute arrives the underlying data is too fragmented to use.
How felloh handles it.
felloh treats CNP authentication, fraud signals and dispute history as part of the booking ledger, so the evidence the business may need to push back on a chargeback is available without rebuilding it from logs.
The Transactions view in the dashboard exposes CVC, AVS and 3DS outcomes against every CNP payment, and the Risk Analysis page surfaces the chargeback history at booking and portfolio level. Payment Links and the pay checkout move CNP card data through tokenised, hosted flows so the underlying card number never enters the operator’s environment.
For travel businesses where most sales are CNP, the practical effect is that representment goes from an investigation to a query. The evidence is preserved as routine, not assembled after the fact, so chargeback win rates reflect what actually happened rather than how well the operator scrambled for evidence.
Related terms.
MOTO (mail order / telephone order)
Card payments taken without the card being present, typically over the phone or by post.Read termGlossary termAVS (Address Verification System)
A fraud check that compares the billing address with the address the issuer holds for the cardholder.Read termGlossary term3DS2 / 3D Secure 2
Card authentication that asks the cardholder to prove the payment is genuine.Read termGlossary termFraud detection
The process of identifying potentially fraudulent payments before or shortly after authorisation.Read termGlossary termChargeback
A reversal of a card payment initiated by the cardholder’s issuing bank.Read termSee how this works around your bookings.
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