Mar 31

In a world where more and more people rarely use cash and swipe debit and credit cards for almost every purchase they make, nothing is more annoying than the little sign posted by a cash register notifying customers of a 50 cent fee for using a debit or credit card. Customers feel that they shouldn’t be punished with college costs for aggravating to accomplish purchases with a agenda that allows them to clue their spending and abstain the risks of accustomed cash. Merchants feel squeezed as the fees charged by banks and credit card companies allowing them to accept plastic as a form of payment as tripled since the year 2000.

The average fee paid by a merchant for a credit purchase is around 2% of the purchase price. Some of the biggest fees for using credit cards are at fast food establishments and convenience stores where there are high volumes of sales for low dollar amounts. The fees, called interchange fees, generated $48 billion in revenue for banks in 2008. Part of the increase in fees comes from greater costs associated with fraud prevention and protection, but most of the fee is purely profit to a financial institution. There are several ideas that would make these fees more manageable.

Standardize Fees Among Credit Card Issuers
Forcing all issuers to charge a standardized set of fees could lead to lower fees across the industry when card issuers stop competing for bank business by offering higher transaction fees. Fees are also higher in states with sales tax, since the fee is based on the amount of the purchase including all taxes.

Allow Businesses to Offer Discounts for Cash Customers
This is allowed in a few areas, but most companies are not allowed to offer discounts for cash customers. The average fee paid by a merchant for a credit purchase is around 2% of the purchase price~The National Small Business Association cites this as the top way to address concerns over interchange fees}.

Fight for Greater Transparency
The National Small Business Association cites this as the top way to address concerns over interchange fees. If consumers knew how much merchants were paying in exchange for offering the ability to use credit and debit cards, they would be more understanding about paying a fee when swiping their card.

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Jun 28

It would be unwise to neglect fraud prevention measures for merchant credit card processing systems, given the rising occurrence of identity theft and growing public wariness concerning the security of personal financial information. Even seemingly redundant and inconvenient procedures must be rigorously applied in order to combat methods such as social engineering and internal fraud from circumventing the security surrounding sensitive data.

Two commonly available tools for credit card verification help form a resilient line of defense against fraud: the use of an address verification service (AVS) and card code verification (CCV). AVS should be used particularly in circumstances where a costumer’s billing address differs from the shipping address. Although it may be less convenient, a more secure option is to have the billing and shipping information filled out with each transaction that goes through AVS. This is also true of the CCV, which demonstrates that the card is in the physical possession of the authorized user. Keeping a CCV in file for a customer circumvents this security measure.

Rather than having a single log-in for your merchant credit card processing system, you should have a multiple user account with a separate username and ID for every employee that uses the system, with carefully selected sets of permissions for each user. This is essential for correlating actions through your merchant interface to individual users, and limiting all but necessary access to sensitive data. You should also change log-in passwords on a regular basis.

You should also regularly monitor new and unsettled transactions, and investigate or void any that seem suspicious before your daily cut-off time. Unusual amounts, changes in address, and unusually frequent transactions are examples of red flags which warrant a closer look at these transactions. Your merchant account may have features which allow you to filter for these indicators automatically.

These are by no means the only measures available to help you to avoid credit card fraud. Ask the provider that does your merchant credit card processing to advise you on additional security measures that may be appropriate for your business.

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