How Credit Card Processing Actually Works

Behind The Scenes of Credit Card Processing

We want to be your merchant service provider. With more than 20 years in the credit card processing business, we’re still working with our very first client because we establish and cultivate long-term client relationships. The difference between Swypit and other credit card processing providers is that we work to make our client experience better.

I’m going to give you the nitty gritty of what happens behind the scenes in credit card processing. As a merchant, I know you just want everything to work. I want to educate you to what happens, so you’ll know when you’re being held ‘hostage’ by a credit card processing company. I don’t want you to be a hostage. At Swypit, we give you the ability to move and go when and wherever you want. I want you to be assured that you don’t have to “settle” for a credit card processing company.

Smooth Operator

My goal is to make everything about credit card processing smooth for our clients.

I want our client merchants to experience the smoothest possible credit card processing. We make the transition from the first swipe to the final payment smooth. We make the customer contact process with us smooth. We do everything we can to make life easy for our merchants. We keep up with all the most advanced equipment to make sure our customers have the smoothest transactions.

So, here’s the basics of what happens with each transaction. A customer comes in to make a purchase. They, or you tap, swipe, chip or hand enter the customer’s card. It hits the network, then goes to the issuer. This could be Bank of America, Wells Fargo or Capital One, or any one of dozens of other issuers. For every single transaction, the credit card issuer either responds with ‘approved’ or ‘declined’. If the card is declined, the most important thing is not to keep trying to run the card again. There’s nothing wrong with the card. It just means theirs no money, the person is broke, or the card has been cancelled.

If you, or the customer keeps tapping, swiping or inserting the card chip multiple times, you, the merchant will never win. In fact, you lose. You have to ask the customer for a different card.

If you swipe a card multiple times you freeze the customer’s account.

What happens when a customer wants to return a product for a refund?

Once you’ve taken a card and it goes through as approved, you get a six-digit code that is good for 7 days. When a customer returns a product and asks for a refund to their credit card, once again the merchant runs the card and gets a six-digit code that is good for 7 – 10 days. When the customers asks when they’ll see their money back in their account, it’s important to let them know it takes 7 – 10 days. “Why?” they ask. Because both the purchase and the refund process has to be cleared. And that takes 7-10 days.

What happens at the end of each day?

The Credit Card Processing Company gets all the transactions at the end of the day

Every transaction made is pooled together at the processing company and then the processing company puts the funds into your bank account. We use a new device through which every transaction is in the Cloud immediately. The device automatically starts downloading from the servers as soon as it connects to the network. You see your daily transactions sooner than in the past.

We limit the amount of downtime our customers experience

When we decided to use new equipment and devices, we make sure everything works perfectly before we start sending it out four our clients to use. In fact, we test it out by having everything sent to us first, so our merchants have no problems. We work out the bugs before our clients get new equipment. We also just rolled out our exciting new website. Have a look and let us know what you think. Visit us at swypit.com and visit us often to keep up with the latest and greatest.

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