Credit Card Processing

Key Takeaways Understanding credit card processing terms directly impacts your fees, approval rates, and cash flow. Merchants who know the terminology negotiate better contracts and avoid hidden costs. Core concepts include how transactions move through authorization, batching, and settlement, who gets paid through interchange, assessments, and processor markups, and what risks exist around fraud, chargebacks, … Read more

Key Takeaways Business-targeted credit card fraud has surged since 2023, with payment and invoice scams alone causing $2.7 billion in reported losses—and actual losses are likely much higher. Small and mid-sized businesses are prime targets because they often lack dedicated fraud teams and formal approval workflows. The biggest risks come from external fraudsters (fake processors, … Read more

Key Takeaways Credit card tokenization replaces the PAN and other card data with a random token that is useless if stolen, protecting your business from data breaches. Tokenization dramatically reduces PCI DSS scope, breach impact, and fraud exposure across online, mobile, and in-store payments. Both single-use and multi-use tokens power card-on-file, subscriptions, and one-click checkout … Read more

Considering the slump the economy has been in the past several years, it’s no wonder thieves are getting more creative in their attempts to steal electronic payment information. Phishing scams are a common method used by fraudsters to trick users into revealing credentials through deceptive emails, texts, or phone calls. It may have been quite … Read more

Even if you’re too young to remember, we can assure you — debit and credit cards haven’t always been the preferred way to pay for things. Cash used to be king at the register — even though it’s been largely displaced from its throne in favor of credit and debit cards and mobile wallets, giving … Read more

Every time a customer pays with a credit or debit card at your business, a portion of that sale never reaches your bank account. These are interchange fees—the wholesale costs embedded in every card transaction—and they represent the single largest component of what merchants pay to accept card payments. Understanding how interchange fees work isn’t … Read more

If the world of credit card processing confuses you, you are far from alone.  In addition to the various entities with a stake in the process, there are many different terms thrown around which can sometimes seem overwhelming to anyone who simply wants to accept credit and debit card payments. What can make the process more … Read more

Nothing will result in a more complete standstill for your business than an issue with your business’s payment processing abilities. Regardless of whether it is a freeze on your processing ability, withheld funds or the termination of your processing account, these situations can often result in devastating effects for your business. A merchant account hold … Read more

While there are credit card processing cancellation fees, there are ways to avoid them. Fees may be assessed at account opening or when the annual fee posts, depending on the contract terms. If you’re a merchant and you need to cancel a contract early, the early termination fee (or ETF) is a way for the … Read more

Most Americans own a credit card. That means a majority of the customers, clients, vendors and contractors vital to your business hold the power to pay with plastic. What’s more, credit and debit cards are by far the preferred payment method for over half of Americans today, relegating cash as the go-to practice for only … Read more