Wait, what? Can transactions still go through without the CVV, except the merchant's transaction fee is a bit higher? They're just not declined outright?
Yes, the CVV is not required. If you think about it, it is obvious CCV isn't since many self-serve card swipe machines (gas stations, grocery stores, fast food restaurants) don't ask you for it.
Yup -- you can authorize a card with a missing, or even incorrect, CVV.
I work at Balanced payments, and this frequently trips up a lot of people. If incorrect CVV information is entered, we note that in our response, but it's up to the user of our API to decide if they want to accept that card or not. (We also use this information as one component of many in our internal fraud systems, of course).