CHASE SELLS OFF PORTFOLIO

Chase Commerce Solutions, the global payment processing and merchant acquiring business of JPMorgan Chase & Co., sold its entire portfolio of Independent Sales Organization (ISO) accounts and associated contracts.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Chase has been decreasing the number of merchant relationships it  supports through traditional ISOs and increasing the number of direct acquiring relationships it has with merchants since it formed Chase Merchant Services, a partnership with Visa that began 2013.

During that time it has focused more on e-commerce, reports said, though the biggest news for Chase Commerce Solutions recently was its agreement with Starbucks in November to take over processing of all its non-mobile payments.

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants Tagged with: Commerce Solutions, e-commerce, Independent Sales Organization, ISO, merchant, merchant services, Mobile Payments, payment processing, visa

VISA CHARGEBACK RULES

Chargebacks is a major problem for merchants, rules and regulations surrounding chargebacks can be confusing; becoming educated about these policies, which also includes the release of a new and upcoming regulations will help merchants to empower themselves.

Visa will make major changes to its chargeback rules document in January of 2016.

Traditionally, Visa has had two different excessive-chargeback programs for merchants:

1. For Domestic U.S. transactions – known as the U.S. Merchant Chargeback Monitoring Program.

2. For international transactions – called the Global Merchant Chargeback Monitoring Program.

Each program had a different threshold and monitored transactions in different geographic regions (each with unique risk profiles), it has been possible for a merchant to qualify for one program but not the other.

http://cardnotpresent.com/articles/displaylogin.aspx?id=12785

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Visa MasterCard American Express Tagged with: chargebacks, merchants, visa

Visa Brings Tokenization To Asia

Visa Inc. has launched the Visa Token Service in Asia Pacific, in association with United Overseas Bank (UOB). Store tokens on mobile devices, cloud-based mobile applications, and e-commerce merchants carry less risk of security hack. This security technology will replace sensitive account information to make payments without exposing bank details.

Tokenized cards are linked to customer’s wallet application or mobile and validated by VisaNet. Biometric authentication and device identification features are available through this service. Visa debit or credit cardholders with NFC-enabled Android smarthphones cardholders will be able to make contacless payments.

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, e-commerce & m-commerce Tagged with: bank, biometric, cardholders, cards, contacless payments, credit, debit, e-commerce, e-commerce merchants, merchants, nfc, payments, token, Tokenized cards, visa

Merchant Aggregators

Merchant account Aggregators has one merchant account that they let people use. You get quick setup, and get shut down quickly. A post approval risk management technique!

What’s the problem with Aggregators? If anything unusual happens their only recourse is to freeze your account entirely or hold your money. Most Aggregators are hard to get hold of because they don’t have human customer support.

Visa and MasterCard monitor Aggregators very closely. Once an individual or business sells more than $100,000, they force the Aggregator to issue individual, traditional Merchant Accounts for the business.

Aggregator is not intended as a long term, scalable solution to accepting payments.

While Aggregators have a One to Many structure, Traditional Merchant Accounts like National Transaction have a One to One structure. Traditional Merchant Accounts are not balancing the risk of your account against others, they want details on your specific situation before they give you a Merchant Account.

Traditional Merchant Account look at three things:                                                             

Your personal history “credit”, your business history if you have one and your business model. If you are working with the Right Merchant Account provider, they will know your business and understand the risk before you accept cards. They have other options to mitigate the risk than simply freezing funds or closing your account.

Why you may want to consider National Transaction over Aggregators, of the thousands of Merchant Account providers out there, only about 1% of them consider themselves High Risk Providers like National Transaction, which despite the abrasive term, are the ones who do effective underwriting.

Give us a call now at 888-996-2273 https://www.nationaltransaction.com/

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants Tagged with: aggregators, High Risk Providers, MasterCard, merchant account, payments, visa

Apple Pay Decals

Get your Business Ready for Apple Pay and Let your Customers know you Accept Apple Pay!

Business owners can order Apple Pay Decals for their Stores. Each Packs includes Two Glass Decals and Two Register Decals in different sizes, and a tool for affixing the ads to the appropriate surfaces. Those who need more than five will need to call Apple to place an order.

Apple made the Apple Pay Logo available for download and provided a PDF explaining its guidelines. Apple specifies that the Apple Pay Logo should be placed ahead of similar marks for other payment services like MasterCard and Visa. The guidelines document of the payment mark are available from the Apple Site.

It’s easy!

Click here to download Apple Pay mark to use within email, on your terminal screen, and on your website.

Order Apple Pay decals for your store to put on your storefront window and register.

National Transaction Terminals with EMV/NFC (near field communication) Capability to accept Apple Pay, Android Pay and other NFC payment transactions at your business.                       Give us a call now at 888-996-2273.

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants Tagged with: Android Pay, Apple Pay, EMV, MasterCard, Near Field Communication, nfc, payment services, payment transactions, terminals, visa

Largest Convention In Payment History

Money 20/20 was billed as the largest convention in payments history held in Las Las Vegas, during the last week of October 2015.

The show delivered well-organized, incisive content such as Europay, MasterCard and Visa (EMV) migration, mobile payments, security and omnichannel commerce.

20/20 Highlights

• Alternative lending and credit.
• Bill Payments, Financial Services: Newly released market research provides insights into the future of household bill payments, millennials, and financial services.
• Connected Commerce and the Mobile Enterprise: The Internet of Things is changing the way that consumers interact with their environments. Analysts predict up to 30 billion interactive devices will be connected to the Internet by 2020, noting that many of these devices will be payment-enabled.
• Marketing and Customer Experience: Most marketers agree that the era of demographic profiles and pull marketing is over. Retailers, card brands and information technology professionals looked at the customer experience in the digital world. They explored new marketing practices, trends in e-commerce and mobile commerce, and big data findings in other industries that may be useful to financial service companies.
• Mobile Banking: Banks are undergoing an incremental transformation as they learn to compete with nonbank lenders, balance cash management with digital currencies, and shift from local branches to online and mobile forms of banking.
• Mobile Payments: Payments analysts reviewed Apple Pay a year after its launch and a range of other mobile wallet offerings, and they speculated on how third-party wallets will impact bank apps.
• Payment Card Evolution: Payment card issuers, processors and network service providers analyzed the changing look, feel and role of payment cards in the greater ecosystem. Discussions ranged from card linking to the coolness factor of gift cards to how e-cards are expanding market opportunities.
• POS, Processing and Open Platforms: Executive roundtables with leading acquirers explored front-end and back-end technology and omnichannel commerce for small and midsize businesses.
• Regulatory Landscape: Increased federal and state oversight has had a significant impact on the financial services sector.
• Security: Security analysts made in-depth presentations on tokenization, end-to-end encryption, and secure methods of authentication designed to protect consumers, merchants and industry stakeholders from cybercriminals. Many agreed that EMV implementation in the United States will drive fraudsters to the card-not-present space. They discussed how EMV adoption has changed fraud patterns in other regions and offered examples of best practices geared toward identifying and preventing electronic payment fraud.

More than 10,000 attendees and 3,000 exhibitors from 75 countries attended Money20/20. Financial services professionals from mobile, retail, marketing services, data and technology met at what show organizers described as the intersection of mobile, retail, marketing services, data and technology.

The years to come will be a turning point in the payments sector, and with the recent shift to EMV, the entire conference confirmed that all the players are more interested than ever in finding innovative solutions for combating online fraud.

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants Tagged with: Apple Pay, big data, bill payments, card-not-present, e-commerce, electronic payment, EMV, EuroPay, financial services, Gift Cards, MasterCard, merchants, Mobile Payments, mobile wallet, payments, POS, processors, Service providers, tokenization, visa

What is 3-D Secure?

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

Know Your Business

There are numbers of guidelines issued for accepting card payments, and merchants are expected to understand them all. To avoid issues down the road know a few basic rules in order to keep your business going without being penalized.

There’s a lot of ways to process a credit card: In-store, online, and by phone. There’s also different ways to pay and different brands of cards.

In-store and Card-not-present policies.

In-Store Policies:

• Always verify that the person presenting the card is the cardholder
• Ask for a 2nd ID for comparison
• Cards are non-transferable, cardholder MUST be present for purchase
• Compare the signature on the back of the card with that of the person who presents the card
• Inspect the card to confirm that it’s not visibly altered or mutilated
• Validate the card’s expiration date

Online/Phone Payment Policies: Card-not-present transactions

• Card account number
• Card billing address
• CID (3 digits on back of card OR 4 on the front)
• Card expiration date
• Card member’s home or billing telephone number
• Card member name (as it appears on the Card)

Rules for Visa, MasterCard and Amex that merchants need to know:

• Never store cardholder data on any systems to help minimize the risk of fraud and protect your business from potential chargebacks.

Complying with Federal Laws, State Laws and PCI

• A merchant should be familiar with and abide by Federal Laws regarding accepting credit cards. The Fair Credit Reporting Act is the federal law that establishes the foundation of consumer credit rights. This law regulates the collection and use of consumer credit information by merchants.
• Check state laws on the use of consumer credit information and accepting credit cards. Not all states have additional laws that regulate credit card practices, but some (such as California) prohibit merchants from requesting/requiring a customer to provide any personal information (like their address or telephone number) on any form involved with their credit card transaction. So, it is advised that merchants inquire about further information in their particular state.
• The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of requirements designed to ensure that all companies processing, storing, or transmitting credit card information uphold a secure environment. These rules essentially apply to any merchant that has a Merchant ID (MID). If you are a merchant that accepts credit card payments, you are required to comply with the PCI Data Security Standard, large or small businesses.

EMV Liability Shift Set By Visa and MasterCard as of October 1^st

U.S. banks and credit card companies are now using the EMV (Europay, MasterCard, and Visa) technology. The EMV liability shift for fraud carried out in physical stores with counterfeit cards belongs to the merchant if it has not yet upgraded its POS system to accept EMV-enabled chip cards. While issuers absorb losses under card-network rules, that burden will shift to acquirers in cases where the fraud occurs at merchants unprepared for EMV.

It’s good to know every aspect of your business. The above guidelines are part of a business that every merchants should be familiar with. The main reason for these rules is to protect your business and keep your customer’s payment card data safe and secure.

To start accepting more credit cards give us a call now at 888-996-2273. We have the latest terminals that’s EMV/NFC capable.

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit Card Security, EMV EuroPay MasterCard Visa, Payment Card Industry PCI Security Tagged with: amex, card network, card payments, card-not-present, chargebacks, chip cards, credit card, credit card companies, Data Security Standard, EMV, EuroPay, MasterCard, merchants, MID, Payment Card Industry, PCI-DSS, POS system, U.S. banks, visa

Understanding Card-Not-Present Fraud and How To Avoid It

Credit card fraud is much more difficult to prevent in a card-not-present transaction. In a face-to-face setting the merchant can inspect the card to ensure that it is valid and can verify that the cardholder is an authorized user on the account. None of these actions can be performed when the payment is submitted online or accepted by phone. As we moved in adopting EMV Technology, majority of fraud is going to migrate away from counterfeit and stolen cards towards the card-not-present transaction as happened in other countries.

A combination of best practices and fraud prevention tools can provide card-not-present merchants with strong fraud prevention capabilities.

Steps to avoid fraud and protect your business for a card-not-present transaction:

• Email Verification: Send a message to the email address provided by the customer requesting that the customer verify the email address is correct, you can ensure that the email is associated with the other information provided.   
• Maintain PCI compliance:All merchants accepting card payments are now required to be compliant with the requirements of the PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Standard) which sets the rules for data security management, policies, procedures, network architecture, software design and other protective measures.
• Security Code Verification. Requesting the three digit security code on the back of a credit card. Visa (CVV2), MasterCard (CVC 2) and Discover (CID) cards, and the 4-digit numbers located on the front of American Express (CID) cards. Card Security Codes help verify that the customer is in a physical possession of a valid card during a card-not-present transaction.
• Use an Address Verification Service (AVS): Enables you to compare the billing address provided by your customer with the billing address on the card issuer’s file before processing a transaction. AVS is good protection against card information obtained through means like phishing and malware because fraudster might not know the billing address.
• Use 3D Secure Service: MasterCard and Verified by Visa enable cardholders to authenticate themselves to their card issuers through the use of personal passwords they create when they register their cards with the programs. The liability of any fraudulent charges through the 3D service is picked up by the issuer, not the merchant.
• Verify the phone number and transaction information.Prior to shipping your products, call the phone number provided by the customer and verify the transaction information. Criminals may be unable to verify such information, because in their haste to max out the credit line before the fraud is discovered, they often order at random and do not keep records.

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, e-commerce & m-commerce, Mail Order Telephone Order, Payment Card Industry PCI Security, Travel Agency Agents Tagged with: American Express, card-not-present, card-security, cardholder, cnp, credit card, Discover, EMV, MasterCard, merchant, Payment Card Industry, payments, PCI, visa

PCI Compliance Levels, Description and Validation Requirements.

In order to maintain some sort of order within PCI Compliance, VISA and MasterCard have created 4 risk levels that will apply to any particular business, for determining the risk level of a merchant.

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit Card Security, e-commerce & m-commerce, Payment Card Industry PCI Security Tagged with: MasterCard, merchant, PCI Compliance, visa