What is Card-Not-Present (CNP)? | Payments Glossary

A Card-Not-Present (CNP) transaction occurs when neither the cardholder nor their physical card is present at the point of sale. This encompasses all e-commerce, mobile commerce, MOTO (mail order/telephone order), and in-app purchases.

CNP transactions carry higher fraud risk than card-present (CP) transactions, resulting in higher interchange fees. Merchants mitigate risk through AVS checks, CVV verification, 3D Secure authentication, device fingerprinting, and machine-learning fraud scoring.