Dynamic Currency Conversion with NTC

Accept Electronic Payments in Their Currency, Convert it to Yours. National Transaction helps you and your customers transact with confidence.

DCC provides convenient currency conversion service at the time of purchase benefiting both the credit card holder and merchants. Our solution provides a system where the Visa or MasterCard holder in a foreign country can shop on an American based website that displays prices in their own local currency. Dynamic Currency Conversion utilizes a Bank Reference Table (BRT) otherwise known as a Card Recognition Table (CRT). This table is updated on a daily basis so that transactions have the most up to date conversion rate for transactions. Your web site holds pricing information in $USD, and based on the selection of the shopper, prices are converted to their native currency. At the close of the transaction an invoice or receipt can present the total to the customer in their currency, along with the merchants local currency along with the exchange rate that was applied.Your business reaches foreign nations expanding your market while presenting new opportunities, increasing your businesses bottom line and making international transaction with confidence. We have diverse set of applications to enable various kinds of business models and financial frameworks.

 

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants Tagged with: Bank Reference, Card Recognition, conversion rate, credit-card, currency, Currency Conversion, customers, DCC, Dynamic Currency, electronic payments, exchange rate, financial, invoice, MasterCard, Merchant's, pricing, rate, receipt, transactions, visa, website

Boosting Profits With Tokenization

Tokenization technology has been available to keep payment card and personal data safer for several years, but it’s never had the attention it’s getting now in the wake of high-profile breaches. Still, merchants especially smaller ones haven’t necessarily caught on to the hacking threat or how tools such as tokenization limit exposure. That gap in understanding places ISOs and agents in an important place in the security mix, it’s their job to get the word out to merchants about the need for tokenization. That can begin with explaining what it is.

The biggest challenge that ISOs will see and are seeing, is this lack of awareness of these threats that are impacting that business sector. Data breaches are happening at small businesses, and even if merchants get past the point of accepting that they are at risk, they have no clue what to do next. Tokenization converts payment card account numbers into unique identification symbols for storage or for transactions through payment mechanisms such as mobile wallets. It’s complex and not enough ISOs understand it, even though it represents a potential revenue-producer and the industry as a whole is confused over tokenization standards and how to deploy and govern them.

ISOs presenting tokenization to merchants should echo what security experts and the Payment Card Industry Security Council often say about the technology. It’s a needed layer of security to complement EMV cards. EMV takes care of the card-present counterfeit fraud problem, while tokenization deters hackers from pilfering data from a payment network database. The Target data breach during the 2013 holiday shopping season haunts the payments industry. If Target’s card data had been tokenized, it would have been worthless to the criminals who stole it. It wouldn’t have stopped malware access to the database, but it would been as though criminals breaking into a bank vault found, instead of piles of cash, poker chips that only an authorized user could cash at a specific bank.

A database full of tokens has no value to criminals on the black market, which reduces risk for merchants. Unfortunately, the small merchants have not accepted the idea or the reality and fact, that there is malware attacking their point of sale and they are being exposed. That’s why ISOs should determine the level of need for tokenization in their markets. It is always the responsibility of those who are interacting with the merchant to have the knowledge for the market segment they are in. If you are selling to dry cleaners, you probably don’t need to know much about tokenization, but if you are selling to recurring billing or e-commerce merchants, you probably need a lot more knowledge about it.

Tokenization is critical for some applications in payments. Any sort of recurring billing that stores card information should be leveraging some form of tokenization. Whether the revenue stream comes directly from tokenization services or it is bundled into the overall payment acceptance product is not the most important factor. The point is that it’s an important value to the merchant to be able to tokenize the card number in recurring billing, but ISOs sell tokenization products against a confusing backdrop of standards developed for different forms of tokenization. EMVCo, which the card brands own, establishes guidelines for EMV chip-based smart card use. It’s working on standards for “payment” tokenization with the Clearing House, which establishes payment systems for financial institutions. Both entities were working on separate standards until The Clearing House joined EMVCo’s tokenization working group to determine similarities and determine whether one standard could cover the needs of banks and merchants.

 

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants Tagged with: account numbers, bank, billing, card, card brands, card number, card present, Clearing House, data, data breaches, database, e-commerce, EMV, emvco, fraud, ISOs, Malware, Merchant's, mobile wallets, network, payment, Payment Card Industry, Security, smart card, target, tokenization, transactions

Visa Analytic’s VTA cut fraud at the pump

Visa Inc., the global leader in payments, is helping U.S. fuel retailers prevent credit and debit card fraud at the pump with intelligent analytics that identify higher-risk transactions that may be fraudulent. Visa Transaction Advisor uses sophisticated analytics based on the breadth and scale of VisaNet data to flag the riskiest transactions by working with fuel companies to understand their needs, creating a new service that builds on Visa’s predictive analytics capabilities, providing fuel merchants with more intelligence to prevent fraud and improve their bottom line. While global fraud rates across the Visa payment system remain near historic lows, less than 6 cents for every $100 transacted – fuel pumps can be targets for criminals because they are often self-service terminals. The new solution, Visa Transaction Advisor (VTA), enables merchants to use real-time authorization risk scores to identify transactions that could involve lost, stolen or counterfeit cards. A pilot test of the new service showed a 23 percent reduction in the rate of fraudulent transactions – all without costly infrastructure upgrades or disruption of the customer experience.

How It Works

After a cardholder inserts the card at the pump, Visa analyzes multiple data sets such as past transactions, whether the account has been involved in a data compromise and nearly 500 other pieces of data to create a risk score. This allows merchants to identify those transactions with a higher risk of fraud and perform further cardholder authentication before gas is pumped. The time and costs associated with resolving fraudulent transactions can be substantial for both merchants and financial institutions and inconvenient for cardholders, which is one of the reasons why fraud prevention is critical. Visa’s solution is easy to implement, using existing message fields and formats as well as pump software or hardware to ensure minimal impact to merchants and acquirers. Several fuel merchants who piloted the technology over the last several months noticed a decrease in fraud, without negatively impacting their consumers’ experience. VTA as a tool help mitigate fraudulent transactions. A 23 percent reduction in the rate of fraudulent chargebacks during a pilot program in Los Angeles. This was done with minimal impact to the customer experience, making secure payment at the pump as convenient as possible. Providing fuel to millions of customers each month through approximately 15,000 service stations in the United States, said US Credit Card Operations Manager, from Shell, considering new solutions and technology it has to have a clear business benefit, be customer-centric and easy to implement. With no infrastructure investment, testing VTA as part of proactive fraud prevention tool-set to better identify fraudulent card activity earlier in the transaction cycle, without inconveniencing customers.

Visa Transaction Advisor is available to merchants through participating U.S. acquirers. Visa has partnered with Vantiv and is also working with other acquirers to offer the service to its fuel clients. Ease of implementation is a critical requirement whenever talking about a new merchant service. Visa Transaction Advisor builds on existing payment infrastructure, is easy to implement and flexible enough to allow customization by merchants.

 

Posted in Credit Card Security, EMV EuroPay MasterCard Visa, Visa MasterCard American Express Tagged with: account, acquirers, analytics, authorization, card, cardholder, counterfeit cards, credit, Credit Card Operations, customer, data, debit, financial institutions, fraud, higher-risk transactions, Merchant's, payments, Rates, retailers, terminals, transactions, visa, Visa payment, Visa Transaction, Visa Transaction Advisor, VisaNet, VTA

FCA Regulations and PCI Compliance

Compliance with a single set of regulations is often taxing enough, without other regulations causing a conflict, but this is exactly the situation that the insurance industry finds itself in with its contact centres.

PCI-DSS compliance insists that sensitive information in particular credit card numbers, must be protected and cannot be stored. However, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the UK regulator for the financial services industry, demands that insurers keep sufficient detail of their transactions.

In insurance contact centres, FCA recommendations are met by recording calls. So in order to comply with PCI-DSS regulations, some contact centres simply pause recordings while the card information is read out, and resume recording once the payment process is complete. There’s a very big problem with this method,  it undermines the very reason calls are recorded. The call recording is there to provide an unequivocal record of the circumstances under which the policy is granted. A gap in this record creates doubt. What was said during this time? If a customer is claiming a policy is mis-sold or they were misinformed in some way, a complete record to refute this claim no longer exists. Because of situations such as this, the insurance industry has an inherent dependence on contact centres and person-to-person interaction when selling policies, though in the process has to somehow comply with both regulations. But how? One way is to get the sensitive card information directly and securely to the bank’s payment gateway without storing it. Online, this is done quite easily, insurers can embed a secure payment page into a website and the customer can enter information securely that way. By phone a similar method can be used. A caller can input information directly on their telephone keypad and the tones are only transmitted to the credit card payment gateway not the contact centre. This solves the paradox of the conflicting regulations.

Insurance contact centres need to walk a very fine line, ensuring that they comply with all of the relevant regulations from multiple regulators – even those that, at first glance, contradict each other.

 

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit Card Security, Payment Card Industry PCI Security Tagged with: (FCA), card information, compliance, contact centres, credit card payment, credit-card, customer, Financial Conduct Authority, financial services industry, insurance industry, payment gateway, payment process, PCI-DSS, phone, regulations, secure payment, taxing, telephone keypad, transactions, website

An App To Help Explain Pricing?

API Software Inc. has created an application ISOs can use to help merchants tabulate the best payment services deals. The Square Deal Pro app for the merchant services industry enables sales reps to compare their company’s rates to those of Square, PayPal, Stripe and other payments aggregators. Essentially, the application takes the mathematics burden off of the merchant and helps an ISO or agent compare bundled pricing with interchange-plus pricing.

Frank Haggar, a software developer, started asking merchants why they chose a certain provider and they just said the pricing was simpler. It might be more expensive, but it was easier for them to understand. That moved to develop Square Deal Pro. It’s a software that salespeople can have right on their phones and it makes a comparison and is easy to understand. Square Deal Pro, which operates on iPhones, Android devices and Windows phones, was established as a vendor-neutral tool that is also available for merchants to download if they were inclined to want to crunch numbers themselves. Service providers pay for the application and all of its sales features, but a free version for price comparisons only is available to merchants.

Merchants are experts in what they know how to do and they may not want something that includes math distracting them from that, but the sales rep can do it for them and use it along the lines of a calculator helping someone figure out mortgage rates. ISOs have various tools at their disposal and lock in key information in their brains to prepare for sales presentations, but most will likely find Square Deal Pro a valuable addition. Something that takes complicated pricing schemes and factors it all into an easy interface that puts out a clear comparison that is valuable, certainly out in the field.

API Software has to deliver something difficult or impossible to copy because that would set this permanently apart as opposed to being a lead to other similar products in the market. An ISO can change rates or make adjustments for a client if the numbers show that another provider is offering a less expensive option, but the numbers in the app don’t lie. The app will show how a bundled rate can work in your favor, such as if you are selling Girl Scouts cookies at $3 a box. Then use Square all day long, but an ISO can compare how his product works compared to others and the app can show, that at a certain time, it might be beneficial to switch over.

Square Deal Pro takes into account factors other than interchange rates, including merchant volume, average ticket price and whether transactions are keyed or swiped or both. All of those things determine where you fit in on the diagram of how your rate should be structured. There is a lot of analysis on minimal focal points. The application may also help defuse potential problems with merchants who sometimes feel their sales rep was not providing a fair assessment of pricing structure or comparisons.

As for the application’s name, Haggar doesn’t want any confusion over whether this might be a new Square product.

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants Tagged with: account, aggregators, Android, assessment, bundled pricing, developer, devices, interchange, interchange rates, interchange-plus pricing, iPhones, ISOs, market, merchant services, merchant volume, Merchant's, mortgage rates, payment, PayPal, phones, pricing, Pro app, products, provider, Rates, sales, Service providers, software, Square, Square Deal Pro app, Stripe, transactions, Windows phones

Credit Card Processing Fees

There are no enforced standards in the card processing industry regarding rates, fees, and contractual terms. It is possible for two providers to offer seemingly the same rates and fees that result in different processing costs.

Excessive Monthly, Annual, or Quarterly Fees

There are numerous monthly, annual, or quarterly fees merchants may see on their statements each month. Many merchants pay far more than they should for these fees. The fees may have names like statement fee, service fee, membership fee, regulatory fee, PCI fee, and host of other names. The fair amount each merchant should pay for these fees varies by sales volume and merchant type. Also, the amount a merchant pays for any given fee isn’t as important as the overall processing cost. These are general guidelines; some merchants should pay far less. If you are currently paying more, it may be a good time to review your overall processing cost including your pricing plan, rates, and fees.

Excessive Payment Gateway Fees

A payment gateway route transactions from the merchant’s website to the provider. Some retail point-of-sales devices require a gateway to route the transactions. Merchants generally pay a per-month and a per-transaction fee for use of the gateway. As a rule, the direct cost to process through the gateway is a few cents per transaction.

PCI Non-compliance or Non-validation Fee

Many providers now charge a monthly non-compliance or non-validation fee if the merchant is not PCI compliant. This fee may be in addition to a monthly, quarterly, or annual PCI fee. Supposedly, providers charge the non-compliant or non-validation fee as an incentive for merchants to become compliant. Nonetheless, some providers use this fee more for revenue generation, than as an incentive. Some providers do not charge this fee at all.

Merchants should not change providers because of this fee. Instead, the merchants should become PCI compliant to eliminate the fee and reduce the probability of being breached, which could easily result in huge monetary penalties – tens of thousands of dollars. To become compliant, merchants should complete the PCI Self-Assessment Questionnaire and adhere to the PCI requirements, which may require quarterly scans. In short, if a merchant is being charged a non-compliance or non-validation fee, it is as much the merchant’s fault as anyone else.

Visa FANF Fee

In 2012, Visa started charging providers a Fixed Acquirer Network Fee (FANF). The actual fee charged by Visa is dependent on the merchant type. The fee for customer-present retail merchants is based on the number of locations. The cost for ecommerce and fast food merchants is based on the volume of business. Customer-present retail merchants that have non-swiped transactions can also pay an additional customer-not-present FANF fee.

Most aggregators – i.e., merchant account providers that group multiple merchants into a single merchant account, such as Square, PayPal – integrate the FANF cost into their rates and fees versus itemizing them out separately. Most traditional providers properly pass through the actual Visa FANF fee to their merchants. However, there are a few that treat this fee as another hidden revenue stream. I’ve seen providers charge a flat monthly fee for customer-present merchants and I’ve seen the FANF fee inflated by as much as 50 percent for ecommerce merchants. Keep in mind when reviewing that the fee is generally based on the volume of the prior month. In order words, the fee you see on your statement for April activity is likely based on the March volume, as providers need to know the monthly Visa volume before they can assess the fee.

Unusual Discover Card Fees

For Discover transactions, some providers charge a higher percentage, or higher per-item fee, or monthly access fee.

 

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit card Processing Tagged with: (FANF), access fee, aggregators, breached, card processing industry, compliant, contractual terms, customer-not-present, customer-present retail merchants, devices, Discover transactions, ecommerce, ecommerce merchants, fast food merchants, fees, Fixed Acquirer Network Fee, flat monthly fee, gateway, integrate, membership fee, merchant account, merchant account providers, merchant type, Merchant's, merchant’s website, monetary penalties, non-compliance, non-swiped transactions, non-validation fee, payment gateway, PayPal, PCI fee, PCI non-compliance, PCI requirements, PCI Self-Assessment Questionnaire, pci-compliant, point-of-sales, pricing plan, processing cost, processing costs, provider, provider's, quarterly fees, Rates, regulatory fee, retail, retail point-of-sales devices, revenue, route transactions, sales volume, service fee, Square, statement, statement fee, statements, transactions, visa, Visa volume, website

Make PCI DSS Assessment Easier

The complexity derives from PCI’s Data Security Standards (DSS), which include up to 13 requirements that specify the framework for a secure payment environment for companies that process, store or transmit credit card transactions.

Make PCI DSS Assessment Easier  

Training and educating employees. Technical employees should obtain any certifications or training classes necessary so that they can operate and monitor the security control set in place. Non-technical employees must be trained on general security awareness practices such as password protection, spotting phishing attacks and recognizing social engineering. All the security controls and policies in the world will provide no protection if employees do not know how to operate the tools in a secure manner. Likewise, the strongest 42-character password with special characters, numbers, mixed case, etc. is utterly broken if an employee writes it on a sticky note attached to their monitor.

For an organization to effectively manage its own risk, it must complete a detailed risk analysis on its own environment. Risk analysis goal is to determine the threats and vulnerabilities to services performed and assets for the organization. As part of a risk assessment, organization should define critical assets including hardware, software, and sensitive information and then determine risk levels for those components. This in turn allows the organization to determine priorities for reducing risk. It is important to note that risks should be prioritized for systems that will be in-scope for PCI DSS and then other company systems and networks.

Once the risk assessment has been completed the organization should have a much clearer view of its security threats and risks and can begin determining the security posture of the organization. Policies and procedures form the foundation of any security program and comprise a large percentage of the PCI DSS requirements. Business leaders and department heads should be armed with the PCI DSS requirements and the results of the risk analysis to establish detailed security policies and procedures that address the requirements but are tailored to business processes and security controls within the organization.

Building upon the foundation of security policies, the committee of business leaders and department heads should now review the PCI DSS requirements in detail and discuss any potential compliance gaps and establish a remediation plan for closing those gaps. This is where it is important to have the full support of business leaders who can authorize necessary funds and manpower to implement any remediation activities.

This is also the time to schedule the required annual penetration testing. These are typically performed by third parties, but is not required to be performed by third parties, and can take some time to schedule, perform, and remediate (if necessary). The results of a PCI DSS assessment will be delayed until the penetration test is completed so now is the time to schedule the test.

At this point the organization is ready for a full-scale PCI DSS assessment and can now enter a maintenance mode where periodic internal audits occur and regular committee meetings are held to perform risk assessments and update policies, procedures, and security controls as necessary to respond to an ever changing threat landscape. PCI DSS must become integrated into the everyday operation of the organization so that the organization remains secure and to ease the burden of the annual assessments.

Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance assessment is a major task for any size organization, but you can make it easier.

 

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit Card Security, Payment Card Industry PCI Security Tagged with: assets, card, card transactions, compliance, compliance assessment, credit card transactions, credit-card, data security standards, DSS, networks, password protection, payment, Payment Card Industry, PCI, Phishing, process, risk, risk analysis, risk assessment, secure payment, Security, security control, security policy, transactions, transmit

Low Value Payments Platform In US

Amsterdam, Netherlands-based Cardis has been piloting its technology in Europe with Raiffeisen Bank in Austria and Sberbank in Russia. They are now focused on the U.S., as this is the fastest growing mobile payments market in the world, where there’s a huge opportunity. Integration of technology with a large U.S. processor and with a major U.S. retail brand, which will be launching a mobile site and mobile app using Cardis solution.

Cardis International is planning an April launch in the U.S. for its technology, which enables merchants to accept low-value contactless or mobile payments without incurring high processing charges. Cardis is able to bring down the processing cost of low-value payments, the company said, by aggregating multiple transactions into a single payment.

The problem

Contactless card and NFC-based mobile payments are typically for low amounts, and yet still use a card processing infrastructure that was designed 40 years ago when the average credit card transaction was $100.

Traditional card processing systems require each transaction to be individually processed through the payment system, including authorization, clearing and settlement. The resulting variable costs of processing each transaction are independent of the transaction amount and too high for low-value payments, particularly in low-margin industries such as quick-service restaurants. QSR restaurants often have a 3 percent profit margin, yet, for low-value contactless payments, the processing cost could be as high as 6-7 percent of the transaction value.

Mobile and contactless cards offer consumers a convenient form factor. But they don’t solve the problem that low-value card payments are very expensive for merchants.

As an ever-increasing percentage of transactions have become cashless, card processing fees have become a significant cost. Costs that are based on the number of transactions, rather than their value. With average per person expenditures of $5 or under, feels each swipe fee much more than a business where customers spend $50 or more. But not accepting credit/debit cards for low-value transactions isn’t an option as many of customers don’t carry cash anymore.

Aggregation

Cardis’ solution is to act as an aggregator of low-value payments, sending a single batched transaction through to a processor instead of multiple low-value transactions. As there is no per transaction processing of individual low-value purchases, the cost-per-transaction is significantly reduced.

Cardis provides its technology as a software plug-in to payment service providers for contact-based and contactless card payments, mobile wallet transactions and NFC payments.

There are two models. For card payments, it will aggregate multiple purchases by an individual cardholder at a single merchant on a post-paid basis up to a specific amount, for example $20. To guarantee payment to the merchant, since the aggregated transaction is processed at a later date, it will pre-authorize an amount, for example $15, the first time the customer makes a purchase at that merchant.

Alternatively, merchants can opt for Cardis’ prepaid system. This involves the consumer setting up a prepaid account hosted by Cardis’ sponsoring bank that is topped up via ACH (automated clearing house) transfers. Using the Cardis prepaid account on a smartphone provides the digital equivalent to cash.

With its post-paid solution, merchants will save 30-50 percent per transaction compared to conventional card processing fees, while its prepaid solution saves merchants 80 percent per transaction. With the post-paid solution, it will only aggregate a customer’s purchases at a single specific merchant. But, as the prepaid solution aggregates the customer’s purchases across multiple merchants, this enables to offer a much lower processing fee to the merchant.

Cardis provides an audit trail enabling consumers to track individual transactions that are aggregated using its technology. Consumers don’t lose any of their card protection rights and guarantees by agreeing to let a merchant aggregate their payments through Cardis. They can always charge back any disputed transactions.

Cardis sees opportunities for digital content providers such as online music stores and games providers to use its aggregation technology. It can integrate solution with existing digital wallets.

Raiffeisen

In 2012, Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank launched a pilot of Cardis technology for NFC-based Visa V Pay debit card payments in partnership with Visa Europe. Raiffeisen’s MobileCard mobile payment product uses a secure element stored on an NFC-enabled MicroSD card inserted in a mobile phone. Although Cardis supports secure elements stored on SIM cards as well as on MicroSD cards and on the cloud, Raiffeisen opted for MicroSD cards, as this is an easier solution to implement.

Raiffeisen cardholders participating in the pilot use MobileCard on average three times a week, with an average transaction value of ($5.70). Merchants accepting MobileCard are seeing 40 percent to 70 percent lower merchant processing fees for an average transaction value of  ($5.43) to ($13.60).

Spindle

In October 2013, Spindle, a U.S. mobile commerce company, signed an agreement with Multi-max, a manufacturer of vending machines for mid-size and small offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Spindle will integrate its MeNetwork mobile commerce technology into Multi-max’s line of K-Cup vending machines for rollout across the U.S.

The MeNetwork solution will incorporate all card-based payment acceptance services, as well as mobile marketing services. Spindle’s partner Cardis will provide low-value payment processing services for purchases at K-Cup vending machines.

Posted in Credit card Processing, Credit Card Security, Digital Wallet Privacy, e-commerce & m-commerce, Electronic Payments, Gift & Loyalty Card Processing, Internet Payment Gateway, Mobile Payments, Mobile Point of Sale, Near Field Communication, Payment Card Industry PCI Security, Smartphone, smartSD Cards, Visa MasterCard American Express Tagged with: accept, ach, aggregated, aggregation, aggregator, authorization, automated clearing house, average transaction, batched, card payments, card processing infrastructure, card processing systems, card-based payment acceptance, cardholders, clearing, contactless, contactless payments, cost-per-transaction, credit card transaction, debit card payments, Digital wallets, high processing charges, low-value payments, merchant aggregate, Merchant's, microSD, mobile app, mobile commerce, mobile payment, Mobile Payments, mobile site, mobile wallet transactions, nfc-based, payment service providers, pre-authorize, prepaid, processed, Processing, processing cost, processing fees, processor, settlement, smartphone, transactions, transfers

Unnecessary Credit Card Declines Frustrate Digital Consumers.

Of the 17 percent of consumers who reported having had their credit card declined during a card-not-present (CNP) transactions. As many as one-third of those declines were unnecessary. The result is consumer aggravation, increased operational costs for banks and credit card companies and as much as $40 billion in lost revenue for online retailers.

TrustInsight which helps establish trusted relationships between financial institutions, merchants and online consumers conducted study. A report and infographic detailing the findings of the study found that avoidable online credit card declines lead to loss of trust for consumers, sales for merchants and increased operational costs for credit card companies and issuing banks.

Study also revealed that consumers handle credit card declines in a variety of ways all of which carried negative economic impact to at least one party in the transaction, resulting in unnecessary operating costs for banks, decreased loyalty for the credit card company and lost revenue for all. Almost half call their issuer immediately when their card is unexpectedly declined. This is a natural response. 34 percent of consumers try again another credit card, other use a different payment method and 24 percent will skip the purchase altogether or shop at a different online retailer.

No one wants to turn away business, and no one wants their business declined. The frustration and impact of wrongful declines is a real problem especially as more and more transactions occur in non-face-to-face situations.

Impact of consumer action in the face of a decline can have real and measurable effects on all parties, including credit card companies, banks and merchants manifesting itself in lost customer loyalty, lost fees and lost revenues. Creating a standard for online trust that enables credit card companies, merchants and issuing banks to better recognize trusted digital consumers and reduce the number of wrongly declined consumers avoiding unnecessary losses.

In a world where people are increasingly reliant on a variety of Internet-connected devices for everything from banking to shopping to entertainment and media, creating friction-free customer experiences and preventing online fraud are constant business challenges.

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit card Processing, Credit Card Security, Electronic Payments, Financial Services, Gift & Loyalty Card Processing, Merchant Services Account, Small Business Improvement, Visa MasterCard American Express Tagged with: banking, consumers, credit-card, decline, declined, declines, different payment method, digital, digital consumers, financial, frustrate, internet-connected devices, issuing banks, loyalty, Merchant's, online credit card declines, online fraud, online retailers, shopping, transactions, wrongful declines, wrongly declined

Mobile Payment Solutions

A solution for mobile commerce will be needed eventually, whether you’re an ecommerce merchant or you run a brick-and-mortar shop.

There are mobile payment platforms for digital wallets, smartphone apps with card-reader attachments, and services that provide alternative billing options. Here is a list of mobile payment solutions.

Boku enables your customers to charge their purchases directly to their mobile bill using just their mobile number. No credit card information, bank accounts or registration required. The Boku payment option can be added to a website, mobile site, or app. Price: Contact Boku for pricing.

Intuit GoPayment  is a mobile credit card processing app from Intuit. It accepts all credit cards and can record cash or check payments. Intuit GoPayment transactions sync with QuickBooks and Intuit point-of-sale products. Intuit GoPayment works with iOS and Android devices and provides a free reader. Price: $12.95 per month and 1.75 percent per swipe, or 2.75 percent per swipe and 3.75 per keyed transaction.

iPayment MobilePay is a mobile payment solution from Flagship Merchant Services and ROAMpay. The service accepts all major cards and can record cash transactions. To help build your customer database, the app completes customer address fields for published landlines. The app can handle taxes, tips, and can record transactions offline. You can use the service month-to-month. The app and the reader are free. Price: $7.95 per month; Each transaction costs $0.19 plus a swipe fee maximum of 1.58 percent, or a key fee between 1.36 and 2.56 percent.

ISIS mobile commerce platform enables brick-and-mortar stores to collect payments (via an NFC terminal) from the mobile devices of their customers. Provide your customers with a simplified checkout process through the contactless transmission of payments, offers, and loyalty integrated in one simple tap. Price: Isis does not charge for payment transactions in the Isis Mobile Wallet. Payment transaction fees will not be increased by working with Isis.

LevelUp is mobile payment system that uses QR codes on smartphones to process transactions. Use LevelUp with a scanner through your POS system, or use a standalone scanner with a mobile device. You can also enter the transaction through the LevelUp Merchant App, using your smartphone’s camera to read the customer’s QR Code and entering the amount to complete the transaction. LevelUp also provides tools to utilize customer data. Price: LevelUp charges a 2 percent per transaction fee. Scanner is $50; tablet is $200.

MCX is a mobile application in development by a group of large retail merchants. Details on the solution are vague, but MCX is intended to offer a customizable platform that will be available through virtually any smartphone. MCX’s owner-members include a list of merchants in the big-box, convenience, drug, fuel, grocery, quick- and full-service dining, specialty-retail, and travel categories. Price: To be determined.

mPowa is a mobile payment app to process credit and debit card transactions, and record cash and check sales. mPowa will soon launch its PowaPIN chip and PIN reader for the EMV (“Europay, MasterCard, and Visa”) card standard. (Developed in Europe, EMV utilizes a chip embedded in a credit card, rather than a magnetic strip.) The EMV standard is likely to gain footing to combat credit card fraud. mPowa is a good solution for merchants with a global presence. Price: 2.95 percent per transactions, or .25 percent or $0.40 per transaction when used as a current processor’s point-of-sale system.

PayAnywhere is a solution to accept payments from your smartphone or tablet with a reader. It features an automatic tax calculation based on your current location, discounts and tips, inventories with product images and data, and more. Bilingual for English and Spanish users. PayAnywhere provides a free credit card reader and free app, available for iOS and Android. Price: 2.69 percent per swipe, 3.49 percent plus $0.19 per keyed transaction.

PayPal Here gives you a variety of options for accepting payments, including credit cards, PayPal, check, record cash payments, or invoice. With PayPal Here, you can itemize sales totals, calculate tax, offer discounts, accept tips, and manage payment email notifications. Available for iOS and Android. The app and reader are free. Price: 2.75 percent per swipe and 3.5 percent plus $0.15 per manually-entered transaction.

Square is a simple approach to mobile credit card processing. Square provides a free point of sale app and a free credit card reader for iPhones and iPads. Square offers a selection of tools to track sales, taxes, top-purchasing customers, and more. Square’s pricing is on the higher end, but with no monthly fee Square may be a good fit if you have infrequent mobile transactions. Price: 2.75 percent per swipe and 3.5 percent plus $0.15 per manually-entered transaction.

 

 

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