IP Geo API

IP Geolocation for Fraud Detection

Stop 80% of payment fraud attempts before they reach your checkout.

Fraudsters hide behind proxies, VPNs, and Tor exit nodes. They use stolen cards from one country while sitting in another. Every e-commerce, fintech, and SaaS checkout flow needs location-based risk scoring — and the cheapest place to get it is at the IP layer, before the transaction even starts.

The business problem

Payment fraud costs online merchants ~1.8% of revenue (Juniper Research, 2024). The first signal you can check — before collecting card data, before 3DS, before a charge attempt — is where the request is actually coming from.

Typical fraud indicators at the IP layer:

Implementation: 3-line risk check

Before your /checkout endpoint runs card validation, add one IP lookup:

curl -s "https://api.ipgeo.10b.app/v1/lookup/203.0.113.42" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $IPGEO_API_KEY"

Returns:

{
  "ip": "203.0.113.42",
  "country_code": "NG",
  "country_name": "Nigeria",
  "city": "Lagos",
  "is_vpn": false,
  "is_proxy": false,
  "is_tor": false,
  "is_hosting": true,
  "asn": "AS37252",
  "org": "DigitalOcean LLC",
  "risk_score": 78
}

JavaScript / Node.js example

async function scoreRequest(ip, billingCountry) {
  const res = await fetch(`https://api.ipgeo.10b.app/v1/lookup/${ip}`, {
    headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.IPGEO_API_KEY}` }
  });
  const geo = await res.json();

  let risk = geo.risk_score; // 0-100, server-side scored
  if (geo.country_code !== billingCountry) risk += 20;
  if (geo.is_vpn || geo.is_proxy || geo.is_tor) risk += 25;
  if (geo.is_hosting) risk += 15;

  return {
    block: risk > 80,
    review: risk > 60,
    risk,
    reason: { country_mismatch: geo.country_code !== billingCountry, ...geo }
  };
}

Python / FastAPI example

import httpx, os
from fastapi import HTTPException

async def fraud_check(ip: str, billing_country: str):
    async with httpx.AsyncClient() as c:
        r = await c.get(
            f"https://api.ipgeo.10b.app/v1/lookup/{ip}",
            headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['IPGEO_API_KEY']}"},
            timeout=2.0
        )
    geo = r.json()
    if geo["is_tor"] or (geo["is_hosting"] and geo["is_vpn"]):
        raise HTTPException(403, "High-risk IP")
    return geo

Why IP Geo API for this use case

Pricing math for a typical ICP

Your volume Tier Cost/mo Cost per lookup
< 30 K checks/mo Free € 0 € 0
< 1 M checks/mo Starter € 29 € 0,00003–0,001
< 10 M checks/mo Business € 99 € 0,00001–0,0001
> 10 M Custom on request < € 0,00001

At Starter tier, blocking just one fraudulent € 50 order per month already pays for the entire subscription.

When IP geolocation is NOT enough

Honest: IP geolocation is a signal, not a verdict. For high-value transactions (> € 500), combine with:

IP geolocation’s job is to cheaply filter the obvious so the expensive signals are only invoked for ambiguous cases.

Related use cases

Related comparisons

Read also

Five narrative deep-dives comparing IP Geo API to the providers most often shortlisted in the IP-geolocation market:

Plus seven hands-on migration guides for teams switching from an incumbent provider — code-level field-shape walkthroughs, edge-cache patterns, and rollback notes:

Get started

Sign up at https://ipgeo.10b.app/pricing and start scoring risk in under 5 minutes.

Industry deep-dives

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