Rules. It seems like we have more rules in our lives every day doesn’t it? I am writing this post to make you aware of some more rules. These rules are for merchant accounts and if you don’t follow them you will you will be fined! Well maybe [...]
Source: WikipediaAmerican Express has begun advertising a new website they call “Open Forum – Networking, Ideas and Expertise for Business Owners.” Before I visited the site I thought it would be cheesy – I was wrong. They recently shot a bunch of videos at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas [...]
I have been seeing competing merchant account providers raising their rates because Visa and MasterCard are making some adjustments to interchange rates. So what is really going on? Are the interchange rates really increasing? Here is what I know:
Visa
Effective April 2008 Visa is raising their "Signature Preferred – card [...]
by John Robinson
We know you’re successful business people. (I mean, you’re reading StraightPassThrough.biz, right?) And this means you probably have a pretty good idea who your customers are.
But what if you could use your processing statement to really market to specific customer groups? What if your statement was a powerful sales [...]
Business, as a practice, is neutral. It can be used for profit, power, financial survival, personal expression and even making the world a better place. The truth is, the typical business is used for all of the above and more. What I am wondering out loud is why I [...]
Check out this very simple flash presentation from MasterCard that reveals visually how merchant accounts work:
How MasterCard Works
Cybersource which is the company that owns authorize.net has just come out with a report about web based transaction fraud. This is the eighth year they have come out with this report that includes benchmark data by company size and best practices you can use to prevent or reduce fraud.
Go here and fill out [...]
This week I have had the pleasure of analyzing two merchant account statements from businesses that were running their transactions through the extremely popular business accounting software QuickBooks . Both businesses were with the same merchant account provider and both were paying significantly more in fees than they needed to.
Statement Confusion
What I found [...]
The Association for Financial Professionals reports results from its 2008 AFP Payments Fraud and Control Survey concluding that” “payments fraud continues to challenge treasury and finance professionals, with almost one third of respondents to a new AFP survey reporting that incidents of fraud increased in 2007 compared to 2006.”
To read more click here.
Straight pass through has to do with merchant account risk. Visa and MasterCard have set specific rules to deal with these risks. For example, a keyed in transaction is a higher risk than a swiped transaction, because many times the card holder is not physically present. For keyed transactions, processed correctly, Visa [...]
Have you ever wondered what kind of merchant account the rich and famous businesses of the Fortune 500 have? Just in case you have the answer is Interchange Plus .
What is Interchange Plus?
First lets start by defining Interchange . Interchange is the set discount rates from Visa and MasterCard for various [...]
A downgrade occurs when a transaction fails to meet certain pre-defined criteria from Visa or MasterCard, and an additional charge is added to the discount rate for processing the transaction.
The term “settlement” describes the process of sending a merchant’s batch (set of authorized transactions) to the network for processing and payment. The acquiring bank pays the merchant (less applicable fees) with funds from Visa/MasterCard. The bankcard issuer then bills the card holder for the amount of the sale. Capture is another word [...]
by John Robinson
It’s a terrible thing to have happen. You’ve been alerted by your processor that you have a chargeback to fight. Sheesh. “At least”, you think, “I got all the receipts, signatures, etc. and should still get my money back.” And then you discover the cardholder reported their card stolen the day of the [...]
