Merchant Account - Retail or MOTO? Part 2 of 2

Pricing Difference Between a Retail and a MOTO Account

Both Visa and MasterCard see a card not present (CNP) transaction as a greater fraud risk than when a card is present and swiped. Therefore, both have a .31% surcharge on CNP transactions. So let’s say you have a base discount rate of 1.85% on a retail account. If you switch your account to MOTO your base discount rate would be 2.11% (1.85% + .31%).

So what happens when you have witched to MOTO and a client comes into to your office and swipes their card? If your account is set up correctly that transaction should come in .31% lower than your base discount rate. In other words with a MOTO account you are still getting the lower rate on the swiped transactions and reducing your risk of non-qualified transactions or EIRF.

The only negative is your base discount rate may sound high because of the .31% surcharge. But if you understand how a MOTO account works you can see that higher rate is really not an issue at all.

Summary

If you have more than 25% CNP transactions make sure your merchant account is set up MOTO.

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