How to Avoid Credit Card Chargebacks

Dec 4, 2012 by admin

This article submit by How To Accept Credit Cards Online.

A credit card chargeback no doubt hurts the owner of a business. Say a customer walks into your store and makes a purchase with their credit card. They take their merchandise and leave the store. Then they get their credit card statement and do not recognize the purchase. At that time, they contact their credit card company to dispute the charge.

After doing some investigating, the credit card company sides in favor of the customer and charges back the money they paid. For instance, if they paid $75 for an item, that money is charged back to their credit card and you lose out on that $75. While these chargebacks can be time consuming and costly for you, there are ways to avoid credit card chargebacks.

If the customer is making a large purchase or if you think fraud may be involved, do not hesitate to ask for photo identification such as drivers license. Be sure the person making the purchase is the same person in the driver’s license. Also be sure that the credit card is signed. If not, ask for another form of identification.

One of the reasons that a customer may dispute a transaction is because the purchase they made from you shows up as a different company name on their credit card statement. It would be worth using a DBA, or Doing Business As, name that the customer will recognize.

It is important that you keep copies of your receipt for a minimum of two years. That way, if ever a transaction is disputed, you will have the customers’ signed receipt.

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Merchant Account Basics You Should Know

Dec 4, 2012 by admin

Article Written by : Manufacturing Stoke
New business owners often believe that getting a merchant account can be confusing and a bit overwhelming. But there are three basics that you need to know before getting an account. You need to know what a merchant account is, who offers an account and how much it will cost.

Whether have you have a physical store or you run an e-commerce site, you will need to be able to process credit cards. Many people these days are using credit and debit cards more and more. They are more secure and more convenient than cash. You will need to open a merchant account with a bank or through an online service. Once you sign up for an account, you will be given the correct equipment or software to run the customer’s card through.

Basically a merchant account is a system where you are able to handle credit card or debit card transactions in real-time. It makes things easier for you because it takes just seconds for a transaction to be approved or rejected. There is a contract that will exist between you and the provider. It is important to read and understand the terms of the contract.

You can obtain a merchant account through several financial service institutions. You will find that quite a few people will use a bank as their provider because it is secure and reliable. However, banks do usually have tighter rules and a strict approval process. Another popular option is an internet service provider. There are literally hundreds of them so you need to find the best one for you.

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How to Reassure Your Customer Their Payment is Secure

Nov 4, 2012 by admin

In this day and age with everything going digital, customer are very much concerned about fraud, more specifically credit card fraud. If you are a merchant with a merchant account that allows you to take credit or debit card payments, you will have customers that are concerned about their privacy.

You, as a merchant, will need to let your customers know that their credit card information is safe and secure. You can offer them a credit card security tutorial. This can be done though email where you send them information on how to protect their privacy and tips of fraud prevention. Also let them know when you have taken steps with your merchant account to implement fraud protection features.

Another way you can help protect credit card data is to work directly with the credit card companies. Most major carriers such as MasterCard and Visa will offer measures to assist with fraud prevention. For instance, Visa tells merchants to give their customers receipts which have just the last four numbers of the card on it and have the machine produce codes to hide the rest of the data. This way if the customer loses their receipt, whoever picks it up will not see the whole card number.

Getting your customers inside your store to look around and purchase items is the easy part. However, assuring them that their credit card information is safe and secure is a whole other ballgame. You will need to convince your customers that when you process their credit card, their information is safe. Once you have their trust on that issue, they will no doubt be repeat customers.

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