My Merchant Account Blog

Small Businesses Processing Credit Cards Like Large Corporations

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Most merchants are also customers online at one time or another.  The merchant probably goes online to purchase just about anything.  And as a merchant, you probably take notes on how that merchant's e-commerce website works - especially the check-out procedure.  When you enter your credit card number, you might notice the website will reject your order immediately if you accidentally did not enter enough or too many numbers in the credit card number field. 

This is one of the options to consider adding before trying to get approval from the merchant account provider.  Credit card numbers are determined by a specific algorithm - this is called the Mod 10 or Luhn's method (How Credit Card Numbers Are Determined).  You can ask your programmer to implement this feature.  By doing this, you prevent the transaction from going to the electronic payment gateway, saving you a transaction fee.

Also, have the developer add a feature to check the expiration date - to at least verify the credit card number has not expired.  If you use a drop down menu, sometimes the customer might click too fast and not notice.  For example, if the customer is placing an order today, and their credit card expires in December 2011.  When choosing the date, the customer might accidentally choose 2010.  This is another check that can be added to help save you a transaction fee.  Sometimes, the electronic payment gateway might actually approve the transaction, but you might get a chargeback from the issuing bank.

Once you have determined the credit card number matches the basic algorithm and the expiration date is valid, you are ready to submit the transaction to the electronic payment gateway.  Once this happens, you might get a dialog box that refers to Verified By Visa / MasterCard Secure Code (VBV / MSC) (Verified By Visa-MasterCard Secure Code-Things You Should Know).  Implementing this feature can actually protect you from a certain type of chargeback.

During the checkout procedure, you might also notice that the e-commerce website wants to call you to verify the transaction.  The call will give you a number to enter.  This helps the merchant to verify the phone number.  By doing this, the merchant can easily reduce chargebacks.

Storing the Credit Card Number

If the website offers you the ability to store your credit card number - maybe for future transactions or maybe some type of subscription.  You wish you had the ability to do this without having to worry about your database of credit card numbers being breached. 

You wish you would have the ability to implement all these features.  With the exception of checking the credit card number, United States merchants can do this at no extra cost.  There is one electronic payment gateway that actually will support VBV / MSC, verifying the phone number, and even check the IP address to see if it matches with the billing ZIP code at no extra charge.  It is called the Quantum Gateway.

While some electronic payment gateways have implemented these features, they charge the merchant for them.  The Quantum Gateway was built with the e-commerce merchant in mind (their virtual terminal is also supported on WAP-enabled mobile phones).  While these features not only help the merchant prevent fraud and chargebacks, it also helps the merchant account provider to save its own money and time.  This savings is then usually passed on to its merchants, by not raising their fees.

So now, small businesses in the United States can process just like those larger corporations without being charged any extra fees.

Comments

Name
URL
Email	Email address is not published
Access Code
Please enter the access code
Remember Me
Comments