Posted: May 3, 2024

In a Nutshell: Credit card processors may struggle to differentiate themselves in a constantly evolving marketplace. Yet Accept Credit Cards appeals to merchants nationwide with its low prices, robust technology, and live U.S.-based customer support. Merchants appreciate the firm’s emphasis on personalized onboarding, cost savings, problem-solving, and PCI compliance to keep payment systems serving customers. Steadfast top-to-bottom customer service makes Accept Credit Cards an industry leader and a seamless choice for growth-minded merchants interested in maintaining stable card-processing relationships.

Although holdouts still exist, most merchants acknowledge the advantages of accepting credit cards. Sure, card networks live off the interchange fees merchants ultimately pay, but there’s little argument against respecting consumers’ preferred payment methods.

Anything merchants can do to reduce friction at the point of sale is good, and that includes accepting credit cards.

Problems arise when it’s time for merchants to choose among many possible card processing solutions. Digital transformation has undoubtedly impacted the transaction process, and options abound.

That’s what makes Accept Credit Cards a breath of fresh air in the card processing industry. Nationwide, small-business merchants in retail, mobile, medical, and other sectors consider Accept Credit Cards a go-to solution in a crowded marketplace.

Accept Credit Cards cuts through the clutter with a straightforward approach to sales and service that builds trust and keeps systems doing what they’re supposed to do. Merchants can go back to doing what they do best when they make the executive decision to welcome the Accept Credit Cards team to their team.

“Our customer service is all U.S.-based and live, seven days a week — we don’t let outside companies do our service for us,” said Brian Danzig, President of Accept Credit Cards. “What sets us apart is we handle everything in-house, from onboarding to programming, installation, and customer service.”

Support is always just a phone call away. Cost is always a factor, and Accept Credit Cards doesn’t disappoint there, either.

“If you’re already accepting credit cards, you’ll save when you go with us,” Danzig said.

….To read more use this link: https://www.cardrates.com/news/accept-credit-cards-provides-low-cost-processing-services/

As most merchants know the cost of accepting card payments keeps going up, though in small increments. Merchants now can take advantage of passing some of those costs back to the consumer via “Surcharging”. We will look at the guidelines for merchants to add surcharging to those customers paying with credit cards.

First we should explain what Surcharging means. Surcharging is the practice of adding a small fee to a credit card transaction to cover the merchant fees that businesses incur from processing companies. The biggest thing to know is that you can not Surcharge debit cards or Pre-Paid cards. This means that whatever equipment or software a business uses to process card payments must be able to differentiate between credit and debit cards.

You also need to know your state’s laws on Surcharging. Currently there are only 2 states that completely prohibit Surcharging:  Connecticut and Massachusetts. Other states such as California, Florida, Kansas, Maine, New York, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah have Surcharging rules on the books, but are currently unenforceable due to court decisions, so it is good to keep up to date on those laws if things change.

Current Surcharge rules state that if you add Surcharging, you must surcharge all credit cards from each card brand. Also note that each card brand has its own rules on Surcharging. For example, Visa sets a cap at 3%. Also, you may not charge a higher percentage that your costs for accepting credit cards.

Here are other guidelines:

1. You must notify the card association and your merchant services provider of your intent in writing at least 30 days in advance. (Note: American Express surcharge rules do not require you to provide notice so long as you comply with all other rules.)
2. Surcharge amounts are limited to your effective rate for credit card transactions, capped at 4% (2% in Colorado). In other words, you can’t profit from surcharges; you can only recoup your baseline costs.
3. You must post appropriate notice inside your store at the entrance and the point of sale. Similar rules apply to e-commerce businesses at the checkout page of their websites.
4. You must include the surcharge amount on the receipt as a separate line item. The surcharge must also be included in the network authorization request and settlement. (Note: American Express is the only brand with an exception to this rule.)
5. For Visa and MasterCard, you can apply brand-level surcharges (e.g., all Visa cards) or product-level surcharges (only certain lines of cards). However, you cannot do both.

You must also notify your processor that you will be Surcharging and that your equipment is certified to accurately record the surcharges.

So, should a business take advantage of Surcharging? That really depends on knowing your customers and your competitors. In today’s market more and more businesses are using Surcharging to help offset their fees and customers are becoming more used to seeing these fees added to their purchases.

Need more information? Call Accept Credit Cards and a representative can assist you on choosing the right equipment and Surcharging rate for your business. Accept Credit Cards can be reached at: 800.476.5020 and choose opt.1 for assistance.

http://www.acceptcreditcardsus.com

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7001568904619646976-Btgw?utm_source=post_nba&utm_medium=member_desktop&utm_campaign=copy

Yep, that time of year to look at the holiday shopping season and its potential impact on processing volumes.

Adobe is forecasting just a 2.5% increase from last year. Just to point out the difference it went up 8.6% last year. Some of that was due to the Pandemic still happening, but businesses do count on this time to push up their overall sales volume.

Electronics, apparel and groceries will still see the largest concentration of sales, though discounts on goods will result in a smaller margin of profits. Apparel is predicted to go down by as much as 6.7% as in store purchases are expected to go up now that the Pandemic anxieties go down.

The surprise is groceries. Online grocery purchases have risen by as much  10.5% as more and  more people become comfortable with the ease and convenience of buying groceries online. Most of these sales result in curbside pickups, but shipments of dry goods is going up. An Adobe survey showed that about 35% of 1000 consumers plan to use curbside pickup.

So, while just a modest increase is predicted, online sales and curbside pickups seem to be the normal now for shopping.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/adobe-forecasts-modest-increase-online-

Debit card transactions have finally passed credit cards based on the information from the 2^nd Quarter of2022 from S&P Global Market Intelligence. The study found the 56.2 of consumers preferred using their debit cards vs 39.5% who preferred using credit cards for purchases. That is a huge change in the way payments are done. Just last year only 40.2% favored debit while 54.6 favored credit cards.

The reasons are varied. The security that is now incorporated with debit card purchases using PIN and card tap are some reasons. The other is that consumers like that there are no chances for interest charges and it helps manage their finances better.

Millennials and Gen Zers are the main drivers of this change. That demographic are often credit averse and like the predictability of debit cards as it corresponds with their checking account balances.

Despite this change, the trend of younger people continuing to use debit cards vs credit cards as they age is unknown. But, heavy use of debit cards is definitely here to stay and seems that it will only grow.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/debit-cards-top-usage-credit-first-

Assessing and strengthening password and authentication policies is one significant change in PCI DSS v4.  Not only are requirements more stringent, they also address securing remote access, a path used by many hackers to infiltrate systems in the past.

Once v4 becomes the Standard, merchants must:

1. Require multifactor authentication for all users accessing cardholder data.  In versions past, multifactor authentication was required only for administrators who access systems related to processing or cardholder data. The newer version will require multifactor authentication for any account that has access to cardholder data.
2. Change user’s passwords at least every 12 months, and any time that a compromise is suspected.
3. Require that passwords be at least 15 characters in length and include both numeric and alphanumeric characters.  Prospective passwords will also need to be compared against a list of passwords that are known to be compromised.
4. Review access privileges every six months to confirm that only people who specifically need access to cardholder data have permission.
5. Enable vendor or third-party accounts only as needed and monitor them regularly while in use.

Merchants will not be required to comply with these changes until March 31, 2024, when v4 becomes the only standard, but there’s no reason not to put these in place now. Each one of these requirements increases security to help prevent a compromise.

Per the 2022 Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report shows that for a fifth consecutive year ransomware continues to grow upward with nearly 25% of all data breaches being done with ransomware. The report shows that ransomware has increased by 13%, a figure higher than the last 5 years combined. Ransomware is attaractive as hackers don’t need to be looking for specific data, but just cripple an organization’s daily operations.

Small companies (10 or fewer employees) are being hit more as they often do not have the ability to invest large amounts of their money in cybersecurity. The most common way hackers gain access is through an employees desktop using malicious links or attachments in emails. This can easily be stopped by training employees to not open emails from sources they do not recognize. This can also be mitigated by using antivirus programs and insuring all patches are updated on every employee’s desktops.

Using two-factor logins for business websites is also very important as this can safeguard credentials of not only your employees, but the customers that utilize the websites as well. Too often a business’ customers are targets of fraud by capturing their login credentials and then using that information in malicious ways.

Not only do employers need to be aware of all the steps that need to be taken to ensure their business does not get trapped with ransomware, but they need to keep the safety of their customers in mind as well.

Accept Credit Cards has been providing businesses with reliable and affordable payment processing solutions and superior customer service since 1988.

Visit our website to learn more about how we can help your business grow!

www.acceptcreditcardsus.com

Accept Credit Cards is not your normal everyday merchant services provider. We provide so much more than just low rates for your card payments, we excel in providing you the best payment options for the way your business accepts payments along with the best in US based customer service.

We can reprogram 90% of the current terminals in use by businesses today as well as integrate with a large number of CRMS. We sell PAX and Verifone terminals, and provide restaurant POS systems through Vivid, Dessert and Clover. We also offer virtual terminals through NMI and Authorize.net which can also provide your business with shopping carts for your business’s website orders. In short, no matter how your business accepts payments, we have a solution for you.

Accept Credit Cards is also different in that we provide all of our merchants their annual PCI Compliance free of charge every year. We also provide our talented customer service seven days a week. We are here to help your business grow.

We believe you should expect more from your credit card processor. Shouldn’t your business be using Accept Credit Cards?

Accept Credit Cards is happy to announce that we can offer Dessert Restaurant POS. With Dessert you get the full flavor of a complete POS system for your restaurant without breaking the bank, and great US based customer service offered in English and Spanish. Call us at 800.476.5020 opt. 1 and learn how Accept Credit Cards and Dessert will have you craving this system to push your restaurant to the next level!
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