With all of the information floating around about credit card processing, it's often hard to tell what's true and what's not. Being misinformed about credit card processing can be a costly oversight. Common misconceptions about merchant accounts can lead to costly mistakes.
If you've ever asked a merchant account salesperson what their rate is, you asked exactly what they wanted to hear, and you're probably overpaying for credit card processing services just like the majority of businesses. "What's your rate?" is the most often asked question by merchants when they're looking for the best merchant account - but it's the wrong question to ask.
If you're like most people, you don't give too much thought to the process of issuing refunds to your customers for credit card purchases. After all, it's a pretty easy process - just swipe their card through your machine and follow the steps to initiate a return of their purchase. The funds will be credited back to your customer and you'll be issued a refund for the original processing charges, right?
Taking five minutes to clean the magnetic strip reader on your credit card processing machine can save you big on processing charges each month. The magnetic strip on the back of a credit or debit card holds information about the cardholder that a credit card machine reads when the card is swiped through its reader.
This article covers four tips to help you lower your merchant account processing fees. Even if a single one of these tips applies to your situation, you may be able to cut your processing expenses substantially.
There are many incentives to start accepting credit cards as a form of payment for the products and services that your business offers. The benefits of accepting credit cards almost always outweigh the risks, and the chances of this are greatly improved if you do your homework before opening a merchant account. In this article I'll talk about the importance of accepting credit cards, what to expect as you compare merchant accounts and how to keep your merchant account in good standing once you begin processing.
An extremely important but seldom talked about topic regarding credit card processing is that of merchant account holds. One of the most financially devastating things that can happen to a business is for a processing bank to freeze its merchant account. If this happens to your merchant account, you won't be able to access the account and your funds from open authorizations will be held without deposit for an undisclosed period of time.
The terms "basis point" in reference to credit card processing and merchant accounts is used to refer to the percentage of a sale that a business pays their service provider to processing a credit card transactions. Basis points sound a lot more complicated than they really are. Simply put, the basis points are 1/100th of 1 percent or 0.01 per cent and they're used specifically when referring to the discount rate that a merchant pays to process credit cards.
Anyone that's had to deal with merchant accounts and credit card processing will tell you that the subject can get pretty confusing. There's a lot to know when looking for new merchant processing services or when you're trying to decipher an account that you already have. You've got to consider discount fees, qualification rates, interchange, authorization fees and more. The list of potential charges seems to go on and on.
Not for profit businesses are often able to receive discounted pricing for many business services because of their legal structure. However, most merchant service providers don't give non-profit merchant accounts special consideration. The news isn't all bad, though. If you're a non-profit business looking for credit card processing, you can get low rates and fees by finding a niche provider or by using your company's legal structure as bargaining power.
As credit card processing gets more expensive, a burning questions on the mind of many business owners is, "can I pass credit card processing fees on to my customers, and if so, how?" In short, the answer is yes; you can charge customers a fee for paying with a credit card, but the issue is far more complex than that.
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