January 20th, 2017 by Elma Jane
Qualified vs Non-Qualified credit card rates
The most common forms of rate structures for credit card rates are:
2-Tiered: Qualified and Non-Qualified
3-Tiered: Qualified, Mid-qualified, or Non-qualified
Each and every transaction you accept is classified into one of the above and is the basis for the credit card rate you see on your statement.
As a general rule, qualified transactions are going to be “standard” cards; without any consumer or corporate rewards associated with them. Accepted in the “standard” method expressed in your merchant processing agreement, this is where Card-Not-Present (CNP) setup comes into play.
Mid and Non-Qualified transactions include:
Rewards cards, keyed-in payments (for swipe accounts), AVS (Address Verification Service) does not match or is not performed, not all required fields are entered, or the payment was entered in a late batch. Ex. the payment was sent to the processor 48 hours or more past the time of the authorization.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: card-not-present, consumer, credit card, merchant, payment, processor, transaction
January 19th, 2017 by Elma Jane
Card-Present vs Card-Not-Present – It’s important for a merchant to know what types of credit card payments their business will be taking.
If you rely on mailed, over-the-phone, or online payments a Card-Not-Present merchant account is what you need.
With this type of account, you don’t need the physical card. You are set up to accept credit cards where card information is being keyed into a credit card terminal or online.
A card-not-present merchant accounts base rate is higher than if you signed up for a Card-Present or swipe merchant account.
Why are card-not-present rates higher? There is less risk associated with a business swiping a credit card than keying it in. Why? When a card is swiped, a person is present; where the merchant can check ID and signature. When a person is not present, it’s open for consumer fraud.
However, when you’re setting up a Card-Not-Present merchant account, these factors are taken into consideration during the underwriting process, which leads to a lower base rate for keyed-in payments
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Travel Agency Agents Tagged with: card present, card-not-present, credit card, merchant, online, payments, terminal
January 12th, 2017 by Elma Jane
Accepting non-cash payments from your customers are valuable. If you don’t, you will miss out on sales; because of the growing numbers of customers who only carry plastic or wish to pay online. Today, you have many payment solution options.
Credit Card Terminals – you might remember the beginning of the credit card era and i’ts evolution with today’s countertop terminals. From the traditional swipe of their credit, debit or even gift card to make a purchase to today’s modern terminals. Like accepting EMV chip cards (to be in compliance with a PCI mandate) and NFC payments like Apple Pay.
Beyond the basics; these systems are generally supported by reporting sites that can help you monitor sales, and assist you with maintaining customer loyalty programs.
E-Commerce Solutions – online sales are growing every year. If you are considering an expansion of your business online; you need a complete hosted payment solution for transactions in all payment environments. Including in-store, back office mail/telephone order (MO/TO), mobile and e-commerce, that make your customers’ experience as intuitive and efficient as possible.
Point of Sale Systems – smart registers have evolved into high-tech point-of-sale (POS) systems due to technology advances. Not only taking customer payments; but it can transform your business with an advanced marketing programs, inventory management and sales and profitability tracking and reporting. Over the past years these advanced systems have become cost-effective and easy to use.
Wireless Terminals – in today’s hardware you have the option of accepting payments wirelessly, through a full-service terminal that is smaller than a countertop model, or through a mobile card reader plugin for a smartphone or tablet.
The advantage of a full-service wireless terminal is that it allows for receipt printing on the spot through the device and most modern full-service wireless terminals are EMV compliant and accept both EMV (chip card) and NFC payment types.
Call now 888-996-2273 and speak to our payment consultant to know which solution is best for you.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit Card Reader Terminal, e-commerce & m-commerce, EMV EuroPay MasterCard Visa, Mail Order Telephone Order, Near Field Communication, Payment Card Industry PCI Security, Point of Sale Tagged with: card reader, chip cards, credit card, debit, e-commerce, EMV, gift Card, mobile, moto, nfc, online, payment solution, payments, PCI, point of sale, smartphone, terminals, transactions
December 21st, 2016 by Admin
Ways to Prevent CHARGEBACK:
Provide Receipts for every single transaction. Receipt serves as a good reminder to the purchase they make and decreases the likelihood of a charge back. Have the conditions of sale written on the receipt
Be clear about refunds, returns and cancellation policies – include refund, return and cancellation policy on your website.
Make sure charge descriptions are clear. Use dynamic descriptors – with dynamic descriptors, you can include specifics like the product purchased, business name, business location and contact information. Include a number as part of the charge description.
Provide accurate descriptions of products and services – accurate product descriptions are particularly important for online ecommerce where customers often dispute transactions because the product they received is not as it was described online.
Get signed proof of delivery products – especially if you’re an online ecommerce vendors that ships products regularly.
Communicate with customers about renewals – if your customer accounts are set to automatically renew, make sure you notify those customers of their renewal months leading up to the renewal day.
When a cardholder contacts their credit card-issuing bank and asks for a refund on a transaction for a purchase or service made on their card is called chargeback.
Most Common Reasons for Chargebacks:
Point-of-sale processing errors
Customer disputes like, customer doesn’t recognize the charge, customer claims they didn’t receive the item they ordered.
Fraud, or potential fraud (customer claims the transaction is fraudulent – the purchase was made with a stolen card).
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants Tagged with: bank, cardholder, chargeback, credit card, customer, ecommerce, fraud, online, point of sale, transaction
December 19th, 2016 by Elma Jane
Surcharges and Convenience Fees:
A surcharge is a fee that is added to a card transaction, either as a set amount or a percentage of a transaction. Typically, used to cover the cost of the merchant service charge.
There are rules, exceptions and state laws to observe to ensure you are compliant.
At present there are surcharge bans in the following states:
California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Oklahoma and Texas. (Appeals are pending for California and Florida)
Surcharge Rules:
- Applicable only to credit card transactions, not debit or prepaid card transactions.
- The surcharge cannot be greater than the merchant’s average discount rate for that brand’s credit card transactions.
- Maximum surcharge allowed is 4%.
- Cardholder must be notified of the surcharge.
- Surcharge must be listed on the receipt as a line item and the primary payment amount must be processed together as one transaction.
A convenience fee is a fee charged for the “convenience” of being able to pay using an alternative payment channel outside the merchant’s customary payment channel.
Any merchant can charge a convenience fee IF the fee charged is for the legitimate convenience of being able to pay using a different payment channel than the merchant’s usual payment channel.
Example: Your business customary payment channel is face-to-face or card present and you provide an alternative payment channel, such as the option to pay by phone using a credit card, that could then charge a convenience fee along with the payment.
Mail Order/Telephone Order (MOTO) merchants and ecommerce merchants, whose customary payment channel is exclusively non face-to-face or card-not-present, are NOT permitted to charge convenience fees.
Convenience Fee Rules:
- Customer must be notified of the convenience fee prior to finalizing payment and given the opportunity to cancel.
- Payment must take place through an alternative payment channel.
- The fee can only be added to a non face-to-face transaction. Must be flat or fixed, regardless of the value of the payment due.
- The fee must be applied to all means of payment accepted through the alternative payment channel. Must be included in the total transaction amount.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, e-commerce & m-commerce, Mail Order Telephone Order Tagged with: card-not-present, Convenience Fees, credit card, debit, ecommerce, merchant, moto, payment, prepaid card, Surcharges, transaction
November 30th, 2016 by Elma Jane
Understanding Interchange Rates & Fees
Credit card processing involves three separate cost components:
For vendors who choose to accept this type of payment, from customers for goods or services.
The same cost components apply to debit cards. Only one cost component is negotiable.
The first component is an interchange fee, which is payable to the card holder’s issuing bank. It is a combination of a transaction volume percentage fee and a flat-rate transaction fee. Interchange fees are collectively agreed upon through Visa and MasterCard by a card’s issuing bank and are fixed costs.
Interchange fees take into consideration various information about a card. Types of cards include debit and credit, while categories of cards refer to commercial and reward cards. Processing methods include whether a card is swiped or manually keyed. Swiping a card is usually more economical for vendors.
The second component is an assessment fee, charged by the card’s brand holder. Brand holders include Visa, MasterCard and Discover. Assessment fees are also fixed costs. Additionally, Visa charges a monthly fee.
The final charge is known as a processing fee. Processing fees vary among processors and is negotiable. Vendors are charged a processing fee, which can cause a difference in cost from one vendor to another.
For your electronic payments need give us a call 888-996-2273
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Travel Agency Agents Tagged with: bank, credit card, customers, debit cards, electronic payments, payment, reward cards, transaction
November 29th, 2016 by Elma Jane
GET THE LOWEST CREDIT CARD TRANSACTION RATES & FEES BY DOING THE FOLLOWING:
1. Use newer POS systems to reduce credit card fees.
2. Find out what percentage of your gross sales go toward credit card rates.
3. Perform a statement review at least annually.
Any time a customer uses a credit card to purchase services and goods the merchant pays various rates and fees processing those transactions. Most of these fees go to the bank issuing the credit card as they take on the bulk of the risk in credit card transactions.
Visa, American Express and Discover own the network on which these credit card transactions are processed on and they receive part of the fee and percentage rate as well as establish these rates and fees. Finally the bank that provides merchant account services gets part of these rates and fees.
To a small business 2, 3, or even 4% might not sound like much but when these fees are on the gross total of sales they can be significantly higher than originally thought.
For this reason it’s a great idea to assess your merchant account statement to see if rates are in line and that your most frequently used cards and transaction types are getting the best rate possible. By going over your statement, you can see exactly what you pay per transaction and get details about your most common transaction types and credit card used to get the process going.
If you are unfamiliar with what these rates and fees mean on your statement companies like National Transaction can perform the review for you. Free of charge.
Ultimately the best thing to have is a merchant account service provider that will take the time to go over your business with an eye lowering your rates and fees. The savings can be significant. As a business grows it changes and there should be an ongoing strategy at maintaining the best processing rates and fees possible. Today with so many different credit card types, like rewards cards, airline miles programs and more it can pay off to check once or twice a year.
For FREE Rate Review give us 888-996-2273
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Travel Agency Agents Tagged with: bank, credit card, customer, merchant, merchant account, POS, rewards cards, service provider, transaction
November 22nd, 2016 by Elma Jane
Be with NTC and enjoy the full benefits of our Electronic Payment Services with high levels of service and security.
In addition, you can enjoy from e-commerce payment gateways to retail and restaurant solutions, business-to-business processing capabilities to electronic invoicing (NTC ePay).
NTC is offering a cost-effective credit card payment processing services that are very fast, secure and easy to integrate.
Get your Secure MerchantConnect Reporting Tool:
- Review and reconcile all of your transactions settle or batch settle and also much more.
- Create and save your custom reports that also can be imported or exported easily.
- Use our solution to turn any computer, laptop, smartphone or tablet into a processing center.
- Run & enjoy this on one or more devices to process credit card transactions with your merchant account.
- Peripherals allow swiping transactions and printing out receipts.
Our Merchant Cash Advance feature will help you very much to enjoy cash advance service. If your business accepts credit cards, getting cash for your business can be fast, simple and very easy.
Receive up to $150,000 per location in less than 10 business days—sometimes in as few as 72 hours.
National Transaction Merchant Cash Advance eliminates many hassles and delays common with bank loans.
Our Merchant Cash Advance builds on the strength of your business’ future credit and debit card sales, so a damaged personal credit history is not an immediate disqualifier.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants Tagged with: bank, cash advance, credit card, debit card, e-commerce, Electronic invoicing, electronic payment, gateways, loans, merchant account, payment, payment services, Security, smartphone, transactions
November 17th, 2016 by Elma Jane
Payment Card Industry
What is PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards)? A set of requirements, founded by Amex, Discover, JCB, MasterCard and Visa; to facilitate industry-wide adoption of consistent data security measures on a global basis. Best practices for enhancing payment account data security.
Why does my business need to be PCI Compliant? You help protect your business
by reducing the risk of a costly breach of your customers’ payment card data. Payment card brands (Amex, Discover, JCB, MasterCard and Visa) mandate that all businesses processing payment cards must be compliant.
Once my business validates PCI-DSS compliance, does that prevent a security breach from happening? No. It helps prevent security breaches and loss of cardholder data but do not provide a guarantee to your business. Also, similar to the regularly required updates to anti-virus and firewall software; data security is also continually subject to new threats.
What happens to my business if I am not PCI Compliant? If you do not comply with the security requirements contained within PCI-DSS as mandated by the payment card networks; you put your organization at risk of a payment card compromise.
In the event that your business is compromised, you may also be subject to additional fines, fees, and assessments by the card brands. You may also lose your credit card acceptance privileges.
What am I required to do to validate PCI compliance? The minimum requirement for PCI Level 4 business is to complete a PCI-DSS Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) on an annual basis and achieve a passing status.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Payment Card Industry PCI Security Tagged with: card, credit card, customers, data, payment, PCI, Security
October 14th, 2016 by Elma Jane
Merchant Account is a LOAN!
Merchant accounts are not depository accounts like checking and savings accounts; they are considered a line of credit. Therefore, when a customer pays with a credit card; a bank is extending credit to that customer and also making the payment on his/her behalf. As for processors or payment providers; they pay merchants before the banks collect from customers and are therefore extending credit to the merchant, that’s why Merchant account is considered as a LOAN.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Financial Services, Travel Agency Agents Tagged with: bank, credit, credit card, customer, loan, merchant, merchant account, payment, payment providers, processors
