Tag Archives: credit card processing

Visa Rules Update 2024 For Merchant Credit Card Processing

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The summary of Visa Rules 2024 changes is nearly 20 pages! Translation: Merchants need for advanced payment processing technology to automate processing rules compliance. It’s critical avoid unwanted extra fees and issuer initiated chargebacks. Here’s a simple way to validate whether technology you have now is likely to support new and future changes:

  1. Reviewing your merchant statement, do you have any transactions with interchange rates of 2.95% or 3.15%, the most common “non-qualified” rates? 
  2. Have you had any issuer generated chargebacks?

If you answered yes, please call 954-942-0483 or use our contact form a FREE review.
Bookmark our handy reference list of card brand rules here.

Since 2007, 3D Merchant Services has offered exceptional services to automotive, manufacturing, distribution, and construction related industries.

Call Christine Speedy, For simple solutions to complex B2B payment transaction problems, 954-942-0483, 9-5 ET. With a focus on card not present and omnichannel technology, Christine has been a sought out payment technology resource for clients, consultants, panels/forums, and the media.

Free credit card transaction fees checkup 2020

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Merchant services fees gradually increased over time? While technology can optimize fee management, there are multiple reasons new fees or rising fees may occur. With this information, you can do a quick self-assessment and determine whether it’s worthwhile to engage with a payments professional for further review. This method is easier than my B2B credit card processing fact check, while still revealing problems that must be resolved.  As a processor neutral payments expert, Christine Speedy offers a unique perspective.

The areas needing most attention are rate qualification and other fees.

Here’s a shortcut to determine if you have authorization problems, which directly impact credit card transaction fees. Why is this important? Because unless you fix the underlying problem, switching merchant accounts will only provide partial relief from escalating transaction fees like the new MasterCard .25% misuse of authorization fee. If you have any of these items below on your merchant statement, there’s a problem that is causing unnecessary extra costs.

  • Misuse
  • Integrity
  • Compliance or Non-compliance
  • Standard / STD (any)
  • EIRF
  • Data rate I
  • Data Rate II or Data Rate 2
  • Chargeback: FRAUD TRANS-NO CARDHOLDR AUTH
  • Chargeback reason: Compliance

Hint: If you open your merchant statement in Adobe Acrobat, in OSX with command F you can copy and paste the terms above. It’s not foolproof due to varying abbreviations, but you only need to have one of the bad items to know there’s a problem.

For card not present business to business, these are two interchange types you should see, but many often don’t and that is also a problems resulting in higher costs.

  • Full UCAF
  • Data Rate III

I don’t know why, but I get calls from other salespeople in the industry looking for solutions to help customers qualify for Data Rate II. Why wouldn’t you want the customer to qualify at Data Rate III? Makes no sense.

I also hear from merchants how they were told that the new solution would fix their level 3 data problems, but it didn’t. If you do preauthorizations, and the solution doesn’t automatically get new authorizations and manage reversals it’s not going to fix authorization problems. Always ask, “how will the payment gateway manage authorization reversals if we don’t settle for the original preauthorization amount’? That’s one of several critical key questions. If they don’t know the answer instantly, move on.

Due to massive changes in card network rules and data security compliance rules over the last two years, a review by a neutral payments expert is essential. Did you have any red items? It’s time for a deeper dive into why.  Your FREE report will identify issues impacting profits and security, include action items how to fix them, and rarely requires changing financial partners.

credit card transaction fee checkup form

Call Christine Speedy, to reduce merchant fees with new or existing merchant account at 954-942-0483, 9-5 ET. Less than 1% of merchant account salespeople are PCI Council QIR certified. With Christine as your account manager you’re assured a unique experience to maximize profits and security without business disruption.

Best Credit Card Processing Services 2020 Reviews- or not?

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Don’t you love it when people write articles about subjects they clearly either don’t know about, don’t know the best resources for information or are just out to make money on what you read via affiliate, advertising or referrals, so it doesn’t matter? That’s the case with articles on “Best Credit Card Processing Services for 2020″. I’ll dissect some reasons why and how to really help you find what you need.

First, there are some critical factors which determine what is the best credit card processor for your business:

  • Volume- a couple transactions or a lot each month
  • Transaction size average- For example, under $25 or over $5,000?
  • Transaction type- phone or mail (MOTO), in-person (Retail), or ecommerce (any type of remote payment, including e-invoice, text and ecommerce shopping cart. on the road.
  • How the sale occurs: tradeshow, water, plane, home service, phone sales, invoice, physical store, shopping cart, online pay page
  • Business type- distribution, service, restaurant, fuel, travel, etc

Only with information above should anyone recommend what is the best credit card processing service because it impacts how you need to get paid and how much cost will vary depending on the solution. As you can imagine, the matrix of options gets complex. Examples:

  • During Covid, someone decides to make masks at home and sell them. In that case Paypal might be the best solution because of it’s flexibility and simplicity.
  • A window and door company has wholesale to the trade and retail consumer sales. This company needs technology to properly manage authorizations for both sales types. I recommend using an agnostic technology solution and a processor that supports level 3 data, which all the big ones do.
  • A restaurant needs to expand their pick up and delivery options due to Covid-19 and projected dining changes over the next 10 years. They need omnichannel technology that will work with different platforms, such as Uber Eats and Door Dash, plus their own online ordering, text specials, and pay at the table.

My general rule of thumb is that for under $250,000 annually it almost doesn’t matter what you pick because the difference between one and another on price will probably be inconsequential. For that reason, I don’t work with businesses that small; just do your research and pick one that you can get out of later if you don’t like it or grow too much and needs change.

Secifically addressing solutions others are touting as the top 10 best my answers are relevant for B2B merchants, and businesses that have a B2B element:

Square: This started as a mom and pop solution for service people, artists (art shows), and other small business needs. I’d dig deeper into options.

Payline Data: I never heard of them and had to look it up. Payline Data is a reseller for First Data and Fifth Third Bank. More on what that means at the end.

Intuit Quickbooks: My pet peeves are fees are taken out of transactions daily, creating extra burden for reconciliation, bundled pricing, which is higher than alternatives, and issues with how it handles customer name and cardholder name differences, since B2B the customer is usually a business.

Helcim:

7 Reasons Your B2B Business Should Accept American Express

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Many business to business merchants don’t accept American Express because of the real or perceived high cost of merchant fees and risk of dispute losses vs. the negative impact on profit margins. Here’s a fresh look at the reality of accepting American Express cards in 2019, including as compared to other card brands.

Top Reasons To Accept Accept American Express

  1. Average higher order. Your best customers are also using American Express for corporate purchasing. You may be losing business by not accepting the cards. For example, an actual merchant 1.7X higher average order than other cards.
  2. Higher annual spend. For example, an actual merchant has 3.0 X higher annual spend from American Express buyers than other cards.
  3. Merchants can completely offset the cost of acceptance, usually by surcharging as explained in this article Credit card surcharge rules and laws 2019.
  4. Amex SafeKey provides card not present fraud liability shift as do other card brands. If merchants support it for customer initiated payments, whether online pay portal, invoice click and pay, or ecommerce, they’re protected from friendly fraud ‘it wasn’t me, I didn’t authorize it’ chargeback losses. Rather than defend the chargeback, prevent it from happening and fighting to get your money back.
  5. Customers can take advantage of your early pay discounts and also use the The Pay Over Time option from American Express to extend their cash flow. You get paid on time to improve your cash flow, and customers extend their credit with someone else to manage their cash flow.
  6. Free business promotion. It depends on your business, but in some cases, especially small businesses, American Express does a lot to promote your business online and via other methods. How valuable is that?
  7. Rates may be lower than you think. Fees have broadened into more categories by card type over the years so it’s not just one rate for everything. You may be able to negotiate if you’re a very large business. The biggest expense for other card brands is interchange; if not managed properly, fees may be the same or higher than American Express depending on the card type.
  8. The Christine Speedy difference. Managing credit card fees is critical, and so is understanding the nuances of credit card processing that impacts all merchant fees. The reality is most players in the payments and consulting industries are not familiar with rules that impact your profit and risk. Call 954-942-0483, 9-5 ET for expert advice about all things credit card processing.