The CHIPD team has put our heads together to come up with our top 5 credit card processing best practices your business should follow in 2014. We believe that following these 5 best practices will help save you and your business time, stress, and most importantly, money.
1. Be wary of credit card processing solicitors, especially via phone. Last year we received quite a few inquiries from our merchants stating that a company in which they thought was us [CHIPD] was phoning them claiming they were overcharged or their equipment was out-of-date. Neither of these statements was true. The solicitor would then send them paperwork, requesting signatures. In a couple of cases, the merchants signed them unknowingly creating a new merchant account with an unethical company. If you receive a phone call like this, don’t sign anything. Call CHIPD or your current provider to determine whether the call is legitimate.
2. Make sure your business is PCI Compliant. With the recent breach with Target, there is no doubt that security is on everyone’s mind. What would happen to your business if something like that occurred? In most cases, it would be business-ending. Being compliant doesn’t mean you are 100% breach-proof, but it’s definitely a good start. If you are compliant, you receive a $50,000 breach policy and you avoid that pesky $18.95 per month non-compliance fees.
3. Keep your signed merchant copy receipts for 18 months. This is a question we receive quite often. Simply put, a customer has about 18 months (depending on their bank) from the time the transaction occurred to file a chargeback. That being said, we recommend you keep your signed merchant copy receipts for 18 months.
4. Swipe credit cards instead of manually keying. If your business allows, try to swipe as many transactions as possible instead of manually keying them. Swiping not only provides you with lower rates (on average about .25% less) but it also provides you with more evidence in the event of a chargeback – a chargeback occurs when a customer disputes a transaction that occurred at your business.
5. Review your transactions each day or night. While reviewing your transactions for the day, look for any duplicate charges or amount errors. It’s best to get any mistakes taken care of right away before an upset customer calls or they file a chargeback.
If you have any questions on these best practices or others, please don’t hesitate to contact a member of the CHIPD team by clicking here. Thank you for taking the time to read this article, we hope you learned something valuable that will help you make 2014 even better and a little less stressful!