
You face numerous challenges in your independent restaurant and-or other retail operations. You should not, however, be challenged in your credit-card payment processing. Acceptance of credit cards is essential for the retailer as well as for the restaurateur. Having a trustworthy, yet affordable and simple, credit card processing solution ensures that your customers can place point-of-sale purchases onto their credit cards or through other electronic payment type.
Having a telephone and a mail-order merchant account allows you to receive customer credit-card payments, but without requiring the customer to be physically present with his card. Your merchant-account provider should offer you many good economical methodologies for credit-card processing, whether by hard-copy mail or by telephone.
Your credit-card processing systems should offer an “AVS,” or “address verification” system. AVS can help reduce fraud and any possible losses caused by illegitimate card orders. This system also helps to lower the risk level of fraudulent charge-backs and-or transactions. With AVS, a card billing address is first requested upon a credit-card charge and then verified prior to authorization for a particular customer transaction.
If you are an e-commerce merchant, you’ll want an account with a guaranteed lowest-possible cost. You can then accept credit cards directly online without excessive burden or frustration, whether financial or otherwise. Your account as an e-commerce merchant should be launched quickly, combining a virtual terminal and an administrative dashboard that you’ll find easy to use. The process of accepting debit and-or credit cards over the Internet should turn out to be both simple and affordable.
Advancements in the technology of credit/debit-card processing have now provided mobile merchants with credit-card authorization opportunities equal to those of retail businesses. Such mobile merchants include taxi, trade-show, and limousine-and-delivery-service participants, among others. Credit-card authorizations can now be obtained from any remote area or location, without the need to rely on either hard cash or paper checks.
One very economical method of energizing your business, should you anticipate small transaction volumes, or if you happen to be out on the trail or you’re not certain whether you need a credit-card terminal just yet, is that of touch-tone processing for customer payments. You simply dial a WATTS number from any portable or land-line touch-tone or pay-phone, or from a typical cellular telephone.
You will have then established a connection with an interactively human voice-response protocol. On the telephone key-pad you can then type the pertinent customer data as prompted, including account number, expiration date, three-digit code and sale amount. Similarly, you’ll also enter your own merchant personal-identification number (PIN).