What is EIRF?
No, EIRF is not a cousin of the once popular Smurfs. In fact EIRF is not any where close to being a nice, soft, smiling, blue cartoon character. On the contrary, EIRF is disagreeable, hard, frowning and black! If you have it you most certainly are wondering what it is, how you got it and how you can get rid of it.
EIRF is an acronym for Electronic Interchange Reimbursement Fee. On first glance the name looks like if you have EIRF you should be expecting to be reimbursed for some fee you already paid – WRONG!
EIRF is a surcharge category for Visa Interchange resulting in a much higher rate for certain merchant account transactions. Visa mandates that any transaction that falls into the EIRF category will incur a surcharge of .76% for retail accounts and .45% for Card Not Present or E-Commerce accounts.
How does a transaction fall into the EIRF category?
Retail Account (Mostly card swiped environments)
There are three main ways for a transaction to fall into EIRF on a retail account:
1. Transaction not batching with in 24 hours (Is your terminal set up to auto batch?)
2. Authorization and settlement amount not matching (Debit cards only)
3. Key entering a transaction with the incorrect billing address zip code.
Any of the above scenarios will result in a minimum of a .76% increase in your rate.
MOTO or E-Commerce Account (Mostly card not present environments)
There are four main ways for a transaction to fall into EIRF on a these type of accounts:
1. Invoice or order number not entered (skipped terminal prompt)
2. Not entering the billing address street number and zip code (do not need to match)
3. Authorization and settlement amount not matching
4. Transaction not batching with in 24 hours
Any of the above scenarios will result in a minimum of .45% increase in your rate.
What if your rates are higher than these?
The surcharges listed above are the actual rates from Visa. If the rate you are paying for EIRF is higher that the ones noted above, your surcharges are being padded for profit by your merchant account provider. If this is the case with your merchant account chances are your surcharges for other transactions categories are being padded as well.
Would you like to lower your merchant account costs by removing all the padding on your surcharges? If so go here to see how much a Straight Pass Through merchant account can save you.
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Thanks Robb!