Merchant account confusion - “mid-qualified” and “non-qualified”

Every week I go through the search terms the visitors to this blog type in before they arrived here. Mainly I see them attempting to discover what the “mid-qualified” and “non-qualified” terms mean on their monthly merchant account statements. According to my experience here are some simplified definitions for these terms.

For Visa Transactions

Qualified = swiped, generic consumer credit cards.

Mid-Qualified = swiped rewards cards, keyed in generic consumer credit cards and sometimes keyed in rewards cards

Non-Qualified = EIRF, commercial cards, Signature Preferred cards

For MasterCard Transactions

Qualified = swiped, generic consumer credit cards (Merit III Base)

Mid-Qualified = swiped rewards cards (World cards), keyed in generic consumer credit cards (or Merit I) and sometimes keyed in rewards cards (World key entered)

Non-Qualified = primarily commercial cards; there are several other types

Debit Cards

If you have a tiered account most of the time you have different rates for debit cards. Generally speaking, if the debit card is swiped it will be titled “qualified debit” or just “debit.” If the debit card is keyed in it will show up as a “mid-qualified debit.” Finally, on a Visa debit card that is keyed in and has an address verification error your category will probably be “non-qualified debit.”

I hope this post helps those of you searching for these definitions. Please keep in mind these are very non-specific definitions. On a retail account Visa has 36 categories and MasterCard 47; so giving you exact definitions would be very difficult provide and hard to comprehend.

Bottom line

If your merchant account is set up this way you are paying more than you need to. My experience has shown me over and over again that tiered accounts have padded surcharges just about 100% of the time. Go here to request an analysis of your current account and I will provide you a detailed report that reveals how much a straight pass through account could save you each month. If you have any questions about this topic feel free to enter them into the comments of this post.

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