May 19th, 2017 by Elma Jane
NTC Product and Services
To be responsive to the needs of our merchants and to meet that needs NTC offers next day funding. This is a value added service for customers and businesses that need to have their funds available quickly.
With more than 20 years of experience, National Transaction offers a variety of electronic payment services and technology for Retail and Ecommerce industries. From Travel, Medical Industry, Charitable Institution and Franchise.
Our services include:
Loans/Funding Program
Credit and Debit Card Processing
Currency Conversion
Electronic Checks
Electronic Invoicing
Gift and Loyalty Card Programs
Mobile and Online Solutions
Shopping Cart E-commerce Payment Gateway
NTC e-Pay – is an Electronic Invoicing that made simple with NTC e-Pay! Free Setup, nothing to integrate; secure and fast.
Invoice customers Electronically with NTC e-Pay. Our e-Pay Platform can help Merchants bring new customers and encourage repeat business.
Our Virtual Merchant Gateway – accept payments your way! Online, In-Store and On the Go. A payment platform that flexes with your business.
NTC Business Loans – Fast, Affordable, and Simple Application Process.
MediPaid – a medical health insurance claims payment. Delivering paperless, next-day deposits for Health Insurance Payments.
NTC provides services to thousands of customers. NTC maintains a one on one relationships with all its merchants providing them with 24/7 customer service and technical support!
To know more about our product and services give us a call at 888-996-2273
or visit Nationaltransaction.Com
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants Tagged with: debit card, ecommerce, electronic payment, loans, Loyalty Card, mobile, online, payment gateway, travel
April 6th, 2017 by Elma Jane
Payment types and it’s categories
The two main category types when it comes to credit card processing are swiped and keyed. Card present or card-not-present.
Swiped or card present transaction – merchants do a face-to-face transaction. A merchant can capture card information by dipping the chip or swiping the card in the terminal or POS. Merchants directly interact with a customer so the risk is low.
Card-Present Sub Categories:
Retail Merchants – conduct transactions face to face in a retail environment.
Face to Face (mobile) – this type of merchant is typically on the go, such as a vendor at a trade show. You can use a service like converge mobile that allows you to take the information in person.
Restaurant – the same as retail merchants, the difference is they may require the ability to add tips to their charges.
Lodging – processes their transactions like retail merchants except they may adjust the settlement amount depending on the customer’s length of stay.
Keyed or card-not-present are high risk, because merchants indirectly collect customers card information, and can process transactions in various ways.
Card-Not-Present Sub categories:
Internet/Ecommerce – conducts business through a web site by utilizing a shopping cart and an Internet payment gateway service. The payment gateway then collects the credit card information and processes it in real time.
Mail & Telephone Order (MOTO) – typically take the customer’s credit card information over the phone, by mail or through the Internet. They then manually process the transaction by keying it into either a credit card machine or through a virtual terminal such as Converge.
Talk to our payment consultant to know the best solution for your business.
NationalTransaction.Com 888-996-2273
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants Tagged with: card present, card-not-present, credit card, customer, ecommerce, merchants, payment, payment gateway, POS, swiped and keyed, terminal, virtual terminal
March 15th, 2017 by Elma Jane
Payment Options
Technology continues to evolve, offering multiple billing and payment methods increases satisfaction by improving customer experience.
Customers will continue to move toward digital life, like embracing different forms of online billing and ways to accept payments.
Creating convenient ways to accept payments and having more options can reduce the time it takes your business to get paid.
Accept debit and credit card payments online; to offer this feature you need to get a merchant account.
Options for accepting payments:
Electronic Check Service (ECS) – convert paper checks to electronic transactions, with NTC’s ECS. Converting paper checks to electronic transactions eliminates many of the risks and costs, adding money to your bottom line.
Mobile Payments – the opportunity to increase revenue through mobile payments is huge. Many consumers find that mobile bill pay makes shopping easier, more convenient and saves time. Converge Mobile Solution lets you accept card payments using smartphone or tablet. The app works with most Apple and Android mobile devices.
Online Payment Gateway – offering customers an online payment form enables them to pay you easily and allows you to accept payments by credit card, debit card or echeck.
Electronic Invoicing (NTC ePay) – send your customers an invoice by email and get paid in minutes. Electronic Invoicing gives your customer the ability to pay their bills and receive a receipt in seconds by email.
Learn more about accepting electronic payments with NTC or sign up with us.
No setup or cancellation fees, there’s no risk! call now 888-996-2273
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants Tagged with: credit card, customer, debit, echeck, ECS, Electronic invoicing, electronic transactions, merchant account, mobile, online, payment, payment gateway
June 23rd, 2016 by Elma Jane
Merchant Aggregators, Merchants of Records and Payment Service Provider what’s the difference?
Payment Service Provider – is a company, which provides payment gateway and related services (like antifraud tools) to merchants. PSP is a representative of one or several acquiring banks. The merchant signs an agreement with the acquiring bank and PSP. The acquiring bank provides a merchant account and secures settlements for merchant’s transactions directly to the merchant’s bank account. Payment Service Provider secures delivery of the merchant’s transactions to the acquiring bank and some related services like fraud scrubbing and recurring transactions. The merchant has an own merchant account with this model.
Merchant Aggregator – is a company, which uses one merchant account to process transactions from many merchants. Merchants don’t have any agreements with an acquiring bank, but with the merchant aggregator. You get quick setup and get shut down quickly. Most aggregators are hard to get hold of, they don’t have human customer support. The problem with this model is, it’s not intended as a long-term, scalable solution to accepting payments and they can freeze your account or hold your money if anything unusual happens.
Merchants of Records – are a merchant, who use services of payment service provider (PSP) or merchant aggregators to accept payments on their websites for goods or services they sell. Merchant of record role requires an array of administrative responsibilities, such as managing a merchant account with a payment processor, paying associated credit card fees for the transactions, other responsibilities like complying with PCI DSS.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Travel Agency Agents Tagged with: bank account, credit card, customer, merchant, payment gateway, payment processor, Payment Service Provider, PCI, transactions
May 18th, 2016 by Elma Jane
Terminals are ready, but the software isn’t – many merchants have EMV capable equipment, but has not been activated yet because it still needs to be certified.
The certification process includes security and compatibility tests.
For a small merchant, all you need to worry about is your equipment or software is EMV certified.
For software, developers, terminal manufacturers needs to get certification before they can deploy their products to merchants.
So many merchants who want to accept EMV, are now just waiting for their POS system to get necessary upgrades, which they can’t do until they’re certified.
Slower Checkout Time – common complaint by consumers. Dipping takes several seconds longer than swiping the card. There’s also a chance of forgetting your card because you have to leave your card inserted while waiting for the transaction to get approved.
The fastest Path to EMV – Depending on the nature of your business, the risk of landing yourself for credit card fraud is slim. The easiest way is to contact your merchant account provider and they will tell you what equipment and software you need and how much it will cost.
For our retail customers, we have the iCT250, the smart and compact desktop device designed for maximum efficiency. iCT250 offers a smart and effective payment experience on minimum counter space. Accept all electronic payment methods including EMV chip & PIN, magstripe and NFC/contactless.
For card-not-present, we have our payment gateway platform that accepts payments your way Online, In-Store and On the Go.
- E-commerce – manage your e-com business along with all of your other payment transactions in one, secure place.
- In-Store – accept payments in person with ease using your computer and a broad range of an optional device, like card readers and PIN pads.
- Back Office Mail & Phone – Process you mail and phone payments online. Converge is ideal for recurring and installment payments too.
- Mobile – Take payments on the go with an intuitive mobile app that’s compatible with most smartphones and tablets.
For more details give us a call at 888-996-2273 or check out our website for our products and services.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit Card Reader Terminal, e-commerce & m-commerce, EMV EuroPay MasterCard Visa, Internet Payment Gateway, Mail Order Telephone Order, Merchant Account Services News Articles, Mobile Payments, Near Field Communication, Point of Sale, Smartphone, Travel Agency Agents Tagged with: card, card readers, Chip & PIN, consumers, contactless, credit card, customers, e-commerce, electronic payment, EMV, fraud, in-store, magstripe, merchant account, merchants, mobile, nfc, online, payment, payment gateway, PIN pads, POS, provider, Security, terminals, transaction
May 12th, 2016 by Elma Jane
Electronic commerce (eCommerce) is a type of business transaction, that involves the transfer of information on the Internet. This allows consumers to exchange goods and services with no barriers of time or distance electronically.
Business-to-Business (B2B) this refers to electronic commerce, between businesses rather than between a business and a consumer. These transactions electronically provide competitive advantages over traditional methods. It’s faster, cheaper and more convenient.
Creating a successful online store can be difficult if you don’t have knowledge of e-commerce and what it is supposed to do for your online business.
What do you need to have an online store?
- Shopping cart – an operating system that allows consumers to buy goods and or services. Track customers, and tie together all aspects of e-commerce into one.
- Or you can check out our NTC e-Pay no shopping cart Solution.
- Taking online payment by getting a merchant account and accept credit cards through an online payment gateway.
You just need to make a better decision in choosing the right shopping cart and a merchant account for your eCommerce shop.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, e-commerce & m-commerce Tagged with: b2b, commerce, consumers, credit cards, customers, ecommerce, gateway, merchant, merchant account, NTC e-Pay, online, online payment, payment gateway, shopping cart, transaction
November 17th, 2015 by Elma Jane
Within the payment processing industry, Merchant accounts are categorized according to how they process their transactions.
There are two primary merchant account categories:
Swiped (Card Present) and Keyed (Card-Not-Present).
Swiped or Card-Present Transactions: Are those in which both the card and the cardholder are present at the time the payment is processed, they physically swipe their customers credit card through a terminal or point-of-sale system.
The sub-categories within this group include:
Retail Merchants – Normally conduct their business in an actual storefront or office space. They primarily use counter-top terminals or Point-of-Sale systems. Restaurant Merchants – Requires a special set-up that allows for tips to be added to the final sale amount by settling the transaction with an adjusted price that will include the tip amount.
Wireless / Mobile Merchants – They use wireless terminals or mobile phones to run these transactions in Real-Time. Have the ability to accept credit cards transactions wherever they are located out on the road.
Hotel / Lodging Merchant – Will authorize a customer’s credit card for a certain sale amount.
Card-Present Transactions also include grocery stores, department stores, movie theaters, etc. Card acceptance settings where cardholders use unattended point-of-sale (POS) terminals, such as gas stations, are also defined as card-present transactions.
Keyed-In or Card-Not-Present Transactions: Whenever the transaction is completed and the cardholder (or his or her credit card) is not physically present to hand to the seller.
The sub-categories within this group include:
Mail Order / Telephone Order (MOTO) – The customers card information is gathered via over the phone, fax, email or internet and then manually key-entered into a terminal or payment gateway software. Once the transaction is approved and completed, the product is then shipped to the customer for delivery.
eCommerce / Internet – Conduct ALL of their business over the internet through a web site. So all credit card transactions are processed online via a payment gateway in real-time. The payment gateway is integrated into the web sites shopping cart. The cardholders card is charged instantly.
Travel Merchants is one example of Keyed or Card-Not-Present Transactions.
Start processing credit card payments today whether Swiped or Keyed.
Give us a call now at 888-996-2273 so more details!
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, e-commerce & m-commerce, Mail Order Telephone Order, Mobile Payments, Mobile Point of Sale, Point of Sale, Smartphone, Travel Agency Agents Tagged with: Card Not Present transactions, card present, card-not-present, card-present transactions, cardholder, credit card, credit card payments, credit card transaction, ecommerce, keyed, Lodging Merchant, mail order, merchant accounts, merchants, mobile merchants, moto, payment gateway, payment processing, point of sale, POS terminals, Restaurant Merchants, Retail Merchants, shopping cart, swiped, telephone order, terminal, transactions, travel merchants
October 20th, 2015 by Elma Jane
We’ve covered a lot about EMV, but what about improving security for online and Card-Not-Present transactions? That’s where 3-D Secure comes in.
3-D Secure allows a card holder to authenticate himself while making an online payment.
In a traditional credit card transaction, a payment request is presented to the issuing bank for authorization. The Issuing bank authorizes the transaction based solely on the funds available to the card holder.
With card present, the magnetic strip on the card can be read and a signature collected. This process has now been largely superseded by Chip and PIN which gives the card holder the opportunity to identify himself via a secret PIN code.
An E-commerce transaction is conducted online, without the possibility to access the card physically. Un-authorized usage and fraud are therefore more likely.
3-D Secure allows transactions to be conducted in safety online, greatly reducing the risk of fraud and chargebacks.
How 3-D Secure Works?
When a payment request arrives at the merchant or payment gateway, the Merchant Plug In (MPI) component is activated. The MPI talks to Visa or MasterCard to check if the card is enrolled for 3-D Secure. If the card is not enrolled, this means that either the bank that issued the card is not yet supporting 3-D Secure or it means that the card holder has not yet been registered for the service. If the card is enrolled, the MPI will redirect the card holder to the 3-D Secure authentication web page for the issuing bank; the card holder will then identify himself. The MPI will evaluate the reply from the bank and, if successful, allow the transaction to proceed for authorization. The transaction could still fail for lack of funds or other reasons but is more likely to be approved because of the authentication.
3-D Secure allows 3 domains to work together.
Domain 1: The card holder has the peace of mind that his card is not used without his authorization.
Domain 2: Merchants are protected from fraud and can provide the product and service without delay or extra costs.
Domain 3: Banks see that the transaction has been authenticated and are more likely to approve the transaction, to the convenience of the card holder.
Implementation of 3-D Secure:
Visa is called Verified by Visa.
MasterCard is called Secure Code.
Amex is called SafeKey.
JCB is called J/Secure.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, e-commerce & m-commerce, Internet Payment Gateway Tagged with: 3-D Secure, amex, card holder, card present, card-not-present, chargebacks, Chip and PIN, credit card, ecommerce, EMV, fraud, jcb, magnetic strip, MasterCard, merchant, online payment, payment gateway, pin code, visa
October 16th, 2015 by Elma Jane
With the EMV liability shift that takes effect in October 2015, how much you’ll be affected depends on how you process credit card payments.
For Card Present Transactions
If you use POS hardware or terminal that you need to swipe the credit card, then you’ll be facing the same EMV environment as retailers. October 1st is the start of the liability shift for fraudulent charges made with the card present transactions. The party who hasn’t made an investment in EMV security features will be liable.
For the card issuer, they need to invest in EMV security features, that’s why they came out with the chip cards, where all credit and debit cards have this security chips that are harder to counterfeit than magnetic strips.
For the merchant, they need to invest in EMV capable terminals or POS hardware that can take advantage of the card’s security chip.
If both parties have made the investment, then liability will be resolved in a similar manner to how it was before the shift. However, if only one party has adopted EMV technology, the party that didn’t make the investment will be held liable.
For Card Not Present Transaction (CNP)
If you process credit cards online, over the phone, or through an online payment gateway integrated, the new EMV standards won’t directly change the way you do business. You’ll still be processing EMV cards based on the customer’s credit card number.
Chances are Card-Not-Present transactions will experience an increase in fraud. Because of the EMV-technology in the Card Present Transaction, fraudster will likely turn their attention to the next target which is CNP,
but payment gateways and banks concerned about the vulnerabilities, will begin to adopt new standards to minimize their exposure.
If you’re processing CNP transactions stay up-to-date on the newest security developments, online security standards find more effective ways to navigate the new credit card security frontier.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit Card Reader Terminal, Credit Card Security, EMV EuroPay MasterCard Visa, Mail Order Telephone Order, Point of Sale Tagged with: banks, Card Not Present Transaction, card-present transactions, chip cards, cnp, credit card, debit cards, EMV, merchant, payment gateway, payments, POS, terminal
September 4th, 2014 by Elma Jane
EMV, which stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa, and is slated to be mandated across the United States starting in October 2015 and automated fuel dispensers have until October 2017 to comply. Unlike magnetic swipe cards, EMV chip cards encrypt data and authenticate communication between the card and card reader. Additionally, chip card user is prompted for a PIN for authentication.
Why are those dates important? Companies lose $5.33 billion to fraud today, with card issuers and merchants incurring 63 and 37 percent of these losses, respectively. Under the EMV mandate, merchants who do not process chip cards will bear the burden of the issuer loss. By accepting chip card transactions, merchants and issuers should see a reduction in fraud.
Overcoming Barriers to EMV Adoption
Given the significant barriers to EMV adoption, it may be tempting for merchants to meet minimum requirements for accepting EMV payments. However, medium to large retailers should also consider the bigger picture of customer security and peace of mind.
Some key critical success factors for a payment initiative of this size include:
Business Continuity Architecture: As with all payment systems, it is imperative to have the EMV system running at all times. The solution should preferably have Active-Active architecture across multiple data centers and have a low Recovery Point Objective (the point in time to which the systems and data must be recovered after an outage).
Cost Benefit Analysis: Take a top down approach and decide accordingly on the scope of the analysis. This will ensure that decisions on scope are made on basis of quantitative data and not just qualitative arguments.
Phased Approach: To overcome time or cost overage in a project of this scope and complexity, retailers should try using an iterative approach for development. The rollout can be divided into multiple releases of six to seven months, which will provide the opportunity to review, capture lessons learnt, and improve subsequent releases.
Proactive Monitoring Alerts: Considering the criticality of business function carried out by EMV, tokenization and payment gateway, a vigorous supervising environment must be defined to perform proactive and reactive monitoring. It should take into consideration the monitoring targets, tools, scope and methods. This will provide advance visibility to the failure points and better ensuring maximum system availability.
Resilience Testing: Typically in a software project, the testing is limited to the unit, integration, performance and user acceptance. However, due to the critical nature of the applications and systems involved, robust resiliency testing is vital. This will ensure that there are no single points of failure and the system remains available when running in error conditions.
Stakeholder Identification: This is a key step to ensure that you have varied perspectives from all departments and their support. It will keep your organization from being blindsided and reduce the risk of disagreements in later stages of the program. Key stakeholders should include Store Operations, Card Accounting, Loss Prevention, Contact Center and IT & Data Security.
Organizations should adopt a five step approach to implement a secure, robust and industry-leading payment solution:
Encryption – Point to point encryption will ensure card data is secure and encrypted from the point of capture to the processor. Usually, merchants use data encryption that is not point to point, rendering their organization vulnerable to data breaches. Software encryption is the most common form of encryption, as it is easily installed and quires little or no hardware upgrades; however, it is less secure, may expose encryption keys, and is prone to memory scanning attacks. Hardware encryption is considered more secure but requires more costly terminal upgrades. Hardware encryption is designed to self-destruct the keys if tampered, but is not well-defined as very limited headway has been made in this space.
Tokenization – Build a Card Data Environment (CDE) that will host a centralized card data storage solution. Only limited applications with firewall access and capability to mutually authenticate via certificates can access CDE and receive card data. The rest of the applications will have tokens which are random numbers. This architecture will ease the merchant’s burden with existing and emerging PCI Data Security Standards.
Payment Gateway – Perform a risk assessment on the current payment gateway and identify gaps in functionality, manageability, compliance, scalability, speed to market and best practices. Determine the alternatives to mitigate the risks. Some of the important aspects of a leading payment gateway solution are support for all forms of credit, debit, gift cards and check transactions. Its ability to work with any acquirer, in-built encryption abilities, support for settlement and reconciliation must also be kept into consideration.
Settlement, Funding and Reconciliation – A workflow-based system to handle chargebacks and the automation of chargeback processing will greatly reduce labor-intensive work and enhance the quality of data used for settlement and reconciliation. Upgrades to the existing receipt retrieval system may be needed.
Card fraud is on the rise in the U.S., and merchants are the primary target for stealing information. With the EMV deadline just over a year away, the responsible retailer must take steps to prepare now. Although EMV implementation might seem overwhelming to merchants, they should start their journey to secure payments rather than wait for a looming deadline. Solutions such as data encryption and tokenization should be used in combination with EMV to implement a robust payment solution to better protect merchants against fraud. By proactively adopting EMV payment solutions, merchants can stay ahead of the regulatory curve and better protect their customers from fraud.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit Card Security, EMV EuroPay MasterCard Visa, Payment Card Industry PCI Security, Visa MasterCard American Express Tagged with: authentication, automation, card, card data, Card Data Environment, card fraud, card issuers, card transactions, CDE, chargeback, chargeback processing, check, check transactions, chip, chip cards, credit, customer, customer security, data, data breaches, data encryption, data security, debit, EMV, emv chip cards, EuroPay, fraud, gateway, Gift Cards, host, integration, magnetic swipe cards, MasterCard, Merchant's, payment, payment gateway, payment solution, payment systems, PCI, PCI Data Security Standards, PIN, processor, retailers, Security, software, swipe, terminal, tokenization, tools, visa
