Let’s Get Rid of Your EIRF!
If you are seeing a Visa transaction category named “EIRF” on your merchant account statement you are probably paying much more in discount fees than you need to. If you do not know what EIRF is, read this post and then come back: What is EIRF?
So how do we get rid of EIRF? Here are some options:
1. Make sure your merchant account is set up correctly - I just reviewed a merchant account statement for a 100% “card not present” merchant. They have over 95% of their Visa transactions going to either EIRF or EIRF debit. Why? Their account was set up retail which means their address verification service (AVS) guidelines require an exact match for zip codes from the customers issuing bank.
Solution: Have your merchant account changed to a MOTO (mail order telephone order) account. If you do this, as long as there are any numbers populated in the street number and zip code areas, your EIRF will will pretty much disappear. MOTO accounts do not require the matching address information that a retail account does.
2. Make sure your employees never skip a terminal prompt and set up your software or payment gateway to require the appropriate fields to be entered. If one of these is skipped, you may have yourself an EIRF transaction.
Solution: Train your employees and/or make sure your payment gateways require this information to be entered.
3. Batch your transactions every 24 hours. If a transaction is authorized and does not batch with in 24-hours you will have an EIRF downgrade.
Solution: See if you can set up your terminal, software or payment gateway to auto-batch at the same time every day. Call your merchant account provider to see what time they suggest for this.
Give these solutions a try, if they don’t work feel free to write me . I will be happy to work with you find another solution.
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So are you saying if a MOTO account is set up then AVS really does not apply and you will not get any EIRF charges as long as some number is entered in the zip code field?
What I am saying is that if your merchant account is set up MOTO you will be prompted for street address, zip code and invoice number. All three fields must be be entered but the street and zip codes do not need to match what the issuing bank has on record for your client. So the key is populating all three fields in order to not have any downgrades.
They don’t have to match, but failure to get a match puts the merchant at higher risk of unsucessfully fighting a chargeback or dispute.
Rich, good comment and true. However, I do not suggest setting up a primarily “card not present” merchant with a retail account. It will cost the merchant more in downgrades and the bank will want to use stricter underwriting guidelines for a riskier account.