If you would like to lower your merchant account fees by switching to a “straight pass through” account go here, fill out the short form and we’ll have you saving money in no time.
If you would like us to analyze your current merchant account and show you how much a “straight pass through” merchant account [...]
By John Robinson, of Cocard Synergy
Before I get to the meat of the matter, let me finish what I began last week. It bugged me that I only knew what TJ Maxx was supposed to be fined, so I went and found out what they were fined. Rather than the roughly $100 per [...]
By John Robinson, of Cocard Synergy
It’s a Pain in the You-Know-What, but Necessary.
PCI seems daunting. I’m sure you’ve heard about it. To start, it’s actually PCI DSS that we’re concerned with, and that stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. “Data Security Standard” is the key here.
Basically, the idea is to prevent identity theft. [...]
A Sponsoring Bank is a Chartered Bank or Savings & Loan that has obtained membership in Visa or Master Card in order to allow a Processor access to the Visa and Master Card networks (in order to process these types of transactions).
-Since only a Bank may join Visa or Master Card, many Processors make deals [...]
Credit card processing seems simple enough. However, there are lots of moving parts behind the scenes. Here is a simplified, step by step list that reveals the whole process:
Authorization
1. Your customer presents their credit card (or the card number, expiration date and security code) to you or your employee.
2. You swipe the card or key [...]
By John Robinson, of Cocard Synergy
For the remainder of this discussion, I’ll discuss interchange fees and then a little about the fees to the merchant account provider. The assessment fees paid to the associations, both being small and not negotiable, can wait for another day.
Interchange fees usually make up roughly 80% of the fees you [...]
When I first thought up the name of this blog as "Straight Pass Through" (SPT) my focus was merchant accounts alone. It was all about exposing the truth behind interchange and how it affects a business’s bottom line.
However, in the year this blog as been up my understanding of that phrase has been expanding. SPT [...]
By John Robinson, of Cocard Synergy
For the really short answer, check out Who Gets Your Merchant Account Fees?
Here’s the plain ‘ol short answer:
Originally these fees were created to cover the cost of processing for your customer’s bank (the “issuing bank ”), and to make small profit for the bank giving you your money (the “acquiring [...]
I received a call from a reporter at US News an World Report two weeks ago. His name was Matt Bandyk, a business writer for the magazine. He had found me through my other blog straightpassthroug.biz and he had some questions about how businesses could lower their merchant account processing fees. We talked [...]
Adam J. Levtin , a professor Georgetown Law School, recently wote a real easy to understand article about who all the fees assocated with a merchant account go to at CreditSlips . Here is an excerpt:
"Here’s the deal. You purchase $100.00 of goods at a merchant on a credit card. The merchant receives $100 minus [...]
