Credit Card Processing: Important Aspects Small Businesses Must Know

Despite not appearing complicated, credit card processing is a serious matter for businesses that are very small in size. It won’t be wrong to say that their road to accept credit cards is not smooth. Getting approval for the merchant account, using technologies that are used by the established companies and staying in tune with the evolving security protocols is not easy. However, this doesn’t mean that things are only against these businesses. Very small businesses can stay ahead with knowledge about the below explained 5 major things related to credit card processing.

1. Being familiar with the language

Accepting credit cards is all about learning a whole new vocabulary in order to understand how the money flows. To keep away from the headaches and complex experiences in the future, having some idea about things happening behind the scenes is quite helpful. The four chief players of the credit card processing are:

• Merchant bank: Financial institution that offers merchant account services to ease the transactions to the bank accounts.

• Processor: Known as the third-party middleman, it handles responsibilities of the merchant bank along with facilitating credit card transactions and routing credit card details to the payment networks and merchant accounts.

• Issuing bank: Financial institution that issues credit cards to the customers.

• Card payment brand: Refers to credit card brands such as MasterCard, Discover, Visa and American Express.

2. Find the right credit card processor

Small business doesn’t mean having limited credit card processing options. This is because it’s all about the type of business, how and where it operates and the extent of streamlining needed to run it easily.

3. Revenue requirements

Meeting vendor requirements is a challenge for these businesses if they are not able to generate ample revenue, as credit card processing companies reject the application. As far as revenue requirements are there, they differ widely.

Thankfully, with some research, finding the credit card processors who meet the needs of very small businesses is possible.

4. Data security

No matter the size and chosen processing service, it is important to assure that the vendor has strict security standards and compliance measures. These standard comprise of:

• End-to-end encryption (E2EE)

• Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard

• Three-digit card verification value (CVV2)

• Secure sockets layers (SSL) protocol

5. Credit card processing fees

Charges to accept credit card matter for those who know that credit card processing costs may affect their bottom line drastically. Some types of fees these businesses must know about are:

• Payment gateway fee

• Transaction fee

• Monthly minimum fee

• Statement fee

• Address verification service (AVS) fee

• Average discount rates fee

With this, it’s an end to the discussion crucial facts about credit card processing for small business. To know more, contacting the service providers is the best way out.