Debit Machines

Credit card fraud is an concern, especially in the world of online business operations. Scammers have developed elaborate methods of billing stolen credit card information for large amounts. As a small business owner, you should see it as a red flag when you get an order for an amount of merchandise far larger than your typical order size. If this occurs, you need to take extra precautionary steps to ensure the legitimacy of the order.

For example, if your store typically takes orders for several hundred dollars, and then you receive a purchase request for goods valued at several thousand dollars, this should raise a red flag and be looked into. Extra research into the situation is required, even if your site's electronic payment gateway has verified the credit card and address information. Address Verification and Card Value Verification are not enough to conclusively determine whether a card has been stolen.

It is important to adequately vet unusually large transactions before any goods are shipped. A con artist will obviously not have the goods shipped to the stolen card's address. Your shopping cart software could have a built-in feature to detect discrepancies in distance between the credit card address and the IP (Internet Protocol) address of the purchaser. If not, there are sites online that can perform this function of locating IP addresses.

For large orders, it's also wise to contact the customer directly to determine their legitimacy. If the customer is a fraud, they will most likely not provide a real phone number. Their e-mail address will also typically be from a Hotmail, Yahoo or similar such free service. You should e-mail the customer and request a reply to verify the order, and perhaps even ask that they provide you with a signed credit card authorization form.

Having vetted the order, make sure you tell the customer that you will require their signature upon delivery of the merchandise, or it will be returned. After this, make sure you contact your merchant account provider, and let them know what steps you took to try and verify the suspicious order. Merchant account providers will typically put a hold on money for an order that veers from the merchant's usual purchase trends. Speak to a representative to find out if anything else needs to be done, or if they need to take any steps themselves to verify the customer.

It might seem like a hassle to take these precautionary steps, but if you do you can rest easier knowing you are safer from online fraud.

I probably get 4-5 new Merchants every week contacting me and asking if I can help them get a used Debit Machine they bought online hooked up to a merchant account provider and the short answer is "No, I can not".  Never ever buy a used Debit Machine in Canada hoping to find a provider who'll hook up the processing services.  It doesn't work this way in Canada.

However in the US this is the way it works, you can just purchase hardware from anywhere for a couple hundred bucks and then shop around for your provider the same way you would with a cell phone provider and cell phone hardware, but when it comes to Debit Machines and Canada - no go. No Canadian company (that I am aware of) will take your used equipment and hook it up.  You have to get it from the provider directly and yes it cost much more than a couple hundred dollars.  Typically around $1000-1500 for a terminal with a good warranty.

The reason this is like this is most terminals will have digital locks on them, so even if the provider was willing to take it they may not be able to get their software on the terminal because they do not have the KEY that the last provider coded on it.  The second reason providers won't take these used terminals is due to warranties, they will not give warranties on something that doesn't come from them directly.  The third is they "don't have to" and there is still money to made in Canada on selling Debit Machines at retail pricing and on Debit Machine Leases. (Which is the main driving force - most likely) It will probably change at some point.  I find we are usually behind the US standards by about a decade, by then we may have a completely different way we transact, but that's a whole other post.

The moral of the story is... if you have or are starting a Canadian business that will require a Debit Machine, don't purchase one online second hand.  Make sure you get the hardware directly from the Merchant Account Provider.

The Nurit 2085 Credit Card Terminal is a small in size and flexible credit card processing machine.  The Nurit 2085 credit card terminal is one of the most popular and reliable in the industry.

The Lipman Nurit 2085 provides everything you need from your credit card terminal.  The Nurit 2085 built-in thermal printer ejects highly legible receipts at a rapid rate of 12 lines per second.

There is some controversy over whether or not to share your debit machine with a gift card program.  The answer is it depends.

Most debit machines can handle a gift card application and most merchant account providers over some sort of gift and loyalty card service in tandem with their credit card processing services.

The reason some business owners feel it is not a wise move to have gift cards on your debit machine is because rates change with credit card processing and having gift cards on that machine is a real quick way to be married for life with that processing company.  You can't cancel your services on debit machine if you have 100's if not 1000's of gift cards out there.  Those gift cards will only work with that service provider.

Gift cards can be very powerful and should not be avoided from using just because of this challenge.  You just should use a separate debit machines for each service, that way you are ever being held hostage by one service provider.

I hope that the following article will help you to better understand Merchant Account Limits.

Many Merchants are usually not mindful that their merchant accounts have limits and if gross sales happen to have a speedy growth, like during the holiday season, then the merchant account provider could stop accepting any new transactions, until the following month, thus costing the merchant sales.

As unusual as this may seem, merchant account providers shut down accounts if the total processed amount of money exceeds the businesses profile, which was set-up up during the initial application process and is normally only higher then what the merchant initially estimated would be their monthly Credit Cards gross sales volume would be.

I know this may seem wacky that the Merchant Account Supplier would prevent a business organization from having increased gross sales and growth, but the merchant account provider is simply trying to circumvent any fraudulent activity. When a business organization has spike in gross sales that is much higher then their typical sales profile, it triggers suspicion bots that will put a freeze on a businesses merchant account not allowing them to process credit card transactions till the following month and perhaps even holding funds back as a reserve against possible future chargebacks.

All this can cause the business  some serious cash flow problems.

To head off such scenarios happening to your business, you want to make sure you are mindful of your merchant account limits and then make sure they are set high enough to handle sales growth and sale spikes cause by holiday seasons. Determine out what your merchant account limit is should be as easy as devising a telephone call to your Merchant Account Provider. You can never have too much communication between you and your merchant account provider.

If you have a good merchant account broker then they should be able to help guide you through how to deal with your merchant account limits, merchant account profile, and how to change your visibility limits as your company grows or has growth spurts.

I hope the information above was useful. Thanks for reading

Gift & Loyalty Card Marketing Programs can provide a powerful way for littler companies to compete. US-based Tower Group, a firm that specializes in gift card research, estimated that combined gift card sales would reach $97 billion in 2007.

The fact is, what you get out of a gift and loyalty selling program will depend on the effort and commitment you invest. Card Loyalty Marketing Programs can be a powerful way to grow sales and retain customers. Littler businesses can take advantage of these benefits, but they must be ready to implement them creatively and aggressively.

I will help you understand the costs, profitability and psychology of gift and loyalty card marketing strategies. I will also outline some creative, real-world case studies where smaller businesses have used gift and loyalty cards to compete well against larger, chain-store competitors.

The top fifteen reasons why every company should have its own Custom Gift & Loyalty program.

    * Gift Cards can be easily reloaded...pay for the cards once and keep putting pre-paid cash in the register.
       
    * Every time one of your customers purchases a gift card he has given you an interest free loan!
       
    * A properly designed marketing campaign provides your shoppers with an motive to keep returning.
       
    * Studies shows that 12% to 15% of cash spent on gift cards is never redeemed, creating a pure revenue stream for your business. This is called 'Uplift' in the industry
       
    * Average ticket prices on gift card transactions are higher...studies shows that shoppers spend on average, 65% more than the value of their gift card!
       
    * Returns or refunds can be done through the issuing a gift card (in-store credit) keeping the money in your POS register.      
     
    * Gift and loyalty cards are the number one request amongst consumers today. Prepaid Gift Cards ranked third among the top gifts people want to give this year, trailing only by clothes and books/music/video games
       
    * Offer your customers and incentive for buying Gift Cards, Purchase a $40 gift card and get a $5 gift card as a bonus, you are rewarding your shopper and acquiring a new customer at the same time.
       
They work for major retailers - why shouldn't they work for you? Gift Cards are not just for the Holiday they are for Year round gift giving!

That's it for this article, check out some of the other articles on my site that give great tips on Gift Card Marketing for another great read.

Recently IAN HARVEY wrote an very interesting article on smart card/ chip card technology for Canadians.  It is a worth while read if you want to know who the new technology will affect your business.  Click here to read it.

"The Interac network is among the safest systems in the world, however
debit card fraud can occur, and that's why we're involved in this initiative -
to educate Canadians about steps they can take to protect themselves," said
Tina Romano, Public Relations Manager, Interac Association.

Click here for Cardholder Safety Tips

Setting up merchant accounts is often a last minute task for most small business owners in Canada and often over looked on being one of the most important administrative tasks to  implement into one's  business.  A merchant account in today's market place can cost a small business at least 2% of their total sales and more often closer to 4%, so understanding what questions in essential in capturing low rates.

The first question you will want to ask is what are all 3 discount rates for the credit cards.  There are typically in Canada 3 discount rates a merchant will be charged depending what type of card is being used and how it is processed to pay for goods and services.  The categories are:

1. Qualified
2. Mid-Qualified
3. Non-Qualified

An over simplified break down is: Qualified is "card present", Mid's are "keyed in", and Non's are international cards.  It actually breaks down to specific cards, but with over 35 levels of interchange it can get really confusing fast. 

The main reason you must ask this first question is often times Canadian merchant account providers will only mention or market on the 'card present' discount rates, which is traditionally the lowest advertised rate.  However, they could be charge huge margins on the "Mid's" and "Non's", which means you could be paying through the nose in fees.  Not knowing can hurt you.

The second question you must ask is:

"What are their support hours?" 

If you are a restaurant and they close at 9pm and all your business is after 9pm then having your merchant services with that particular company would be useless regardless of how low the rates may be, if you needed assistance.  Also, you want to find out how soon before they will dispatch a new debit machine to you if your equipment goes down.  Again if it takes a week, then how long will your business stay in business not being able to accept debit and/or credit cards...?

Now do not forget some of the other basic questions like: statement fees, transaction fees, monthly admin fees, annual membership fees, contract/agreement lengths, cancellation fees, warranties, etc.

If you cover the above and get a few referrals & testimonials you probably will be in a good educated position to make a good decision for your business.

Merchant's ask me all time if they should surcharge and my usual answer is..."It depends."  For the most part I think is not widely accepted by the general public and you may risk turning a customer off by surcharging.  I understand that the only reason a merchant wants to surcharge is to be able to off set their own payment processing expenses, but I still think is is better to raise your prices on the front end then it is to try to compensate as your customers go through the check-out.  The customer doesn't understand that you are just trying to minimize your expenses so you can continue to stay in business, they see it as though you are charging them to pay and sometimes this can be a large enough turn-off that they may never return. In my opinion it is not worth the risk of losing returning customers. The only time I condoned this is when the merchant is in an extremely competitive market and they can not raise their front end prices on products and services without losing business to the competition so they must do it on the backend/check-out.