Title: Stop! You’re Paying A Fortune in Processing Fees

You’re likely processing your credit card transactions the wrong way, getting your merchant account dinged with extra fees left and right, and most likely making you pay as much as 40% more than you should be paying.

Do I have your attention now? Of course I do!

Let’s look at the common mistakes that merchants make.

Wrong Type of Merchant Account for Purchases Made (Wrong Merchant Accounts)
Let’s take an example into consideration.

You’ve got a storefront where you sell sports fan apparel and souvenirs. Of course, as a modern business, you also have an online website that you provide online customers a shopping experience through, and you also do some fulfillment for other businesses that sell some sports paraphernalia. It’s a pretty sweet setup, and things are grooving!

Of course, when you started the business, one of the first things you took on was a credit card processing company; they even gave you a few card readers and all the little bits and pieces you needed to get started. So you signed up for a merchant account with them and started up, no big deal!

Well, it is a big deal.

As your customers enter their information on the internet and make purchases, they’re following the same fee structures as customers who walk through your physical storefront. Red alert on the processing front! The moment a customer issues the first chargeback and the processing company does a little looking, you’re going to get slapped with a warning, but more likely, termination of your merchant account, as in their eyes, you’ve been purposefully shortchanging them on transaction fees. No good.

It can happen, and it does. At best, you’re charged fees on transactions that don’t necessarily require them, or even worse, could be cheaper if set up correctly. At worst, your account could be shut down.

Still Using Swipe Cards in a Chip Landscape (Outdated Technology)

Just about all of us have “chip” cards now, from our debit cards to our credit cards. Now merchants have the options to have customers insert or “tap” their cards, making the process much faster and much more efficient.

I’m sure you’ve also been somewhere that you were told “-the chip doesn’t work; it’ll ask you to swipe it.” It may be annoying to us as the customer, but it is actually costly to the merchant as well. That merchant’s processor is slapping them with a fee each time a customer swipes their card rather than using the chip. At the minimum it is .50% and could be as much as 1.00%!

That’s a lot of fees to add up.

You May Not Be PCI Compliant (Hacking Risks and Poor Cybersecurity)
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a collection of security guidelines meant to ensure that all businesses that accept, process, store, or transmit credit card data do so in a secure manner. Essentially, PCI’s entire reason for existing is to help in cutting down on cybercrime, identity theft, and hacks of businesses in order to gain access to financial information.

We’ve all seen what can happen when information leaks out onto the internet. If your processor is hacked and they haven’t been collecting information in accordance with PCI guidelines – well, you can kiss your butt goodbye because you’ll be down for, if not totally out, of business for a while.

It isn’t just about your processor though, how secure are your businesses’ computers? The WiFi network for your building? Your network itself could be an open gate if it isn’t properly secured.

You Aren’t Gathering the Information You Need
Security code, card number, full name on the card, address, and more… It seems like a lot of information to collect, right? Well, the issue is that most card processors require the collection of this information – refuse to or skip on collecting it, and, well, as you’ve guessed, fee city! Yes, costing you a minimum of .75% and as high as 1.75%, in addition to what you already pay!

Don’t Panic!
If you’ve read through the points here and are sweating bullets, it isn’t too late. It is time to comb through your current systems, take notes, find weak points, and get in touch with a certified professional in order to close the gaps in your payment processing systems before the worst happens.