March 8, 2022

Tax Season is Here and Time to Review Your Processing Statements for Savings

Tax Season is here and businesses need to start looking for ways to save money. The easiest way is review your merchant processing statement, in other words how your business accepts credit cards. Reviewing your statement every year allows you to see what your cost is to accept card payments for goods and services. While the rates may be low, you need to check for other monthly fees such as Quarterly dues, Annual fees, PCI Compliance fees, Security Fees, etc. Most of these fees are just ways for your processor to make more revenue off your account and do not really enhance your processing ability. Also, check out your equipment.…

March 1, 2022

How to Prevent Friendly Fraud

Credit Card fraud is and always will be a concern for businesses. What many businesses may not know is how “Friendly Fraud” is now making up to 75% of all chargebacks. What is Friendly Fraud? The definition of Friendly Fraud, also known as first party fraud is defined as this by Fraud.net: “An actual consumer obtaining goods or services from a business, then claiming they did not make the purchase, did not receive the goods; the service was not completed or only received a fraction of the ordered items.” Though some Friendly Fraud is the result of forgetfulness, a family member making an unknown purchase, or simply not understanding of…

February 5, 2022

Early Detection is Critical to Minimizing a Breach

PulseTV, the “As Seen on TV” retailer announced that they have been the victim of a breach. The breach started in November of 2019 and continued undetected until August of 2021. The breach was not discovered until November of 2021, by which time over 200,000 credit card records may have been exposed. In a notification letter sent by PulseTV to its customers, they stated that Visa contacted them on March 8, 2021, and said that they were a common point of purchase for fraudulent credit card use, and that their e-commerce website may have been breached. PulseTV checked their network for malware and reviewed their security settings. They found no…

February 1, 2022

Companies Need to Optimize Their Online Payment Solutions

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/companies-need-optimize-online-payment- Have you thought about how your business is actually getting paid? More specifically how your business is collecting payments online? Most businesses look at their online payment solutions as an afterthought. After all, the main goal is to sell and gain more customers. However, businesses really should look at how they are collecting payments online. A study in Europe (which traditional has been ahead of the US in updating online sales technology) found that 68% of business with online stores are investing in new or improving their payment technology. They see that how a customer pays is really the main touch point for gain resells and growth. If a…

January 12, 2022

Watch for Digital Wallets to Explode in 2022

Covid-19 and all of its variants enticed more and more consumers to use their phones (i.e. Digital Wallets) than ever before. As studies came out suggesting that the virus can live on paper currency up to 28 days, consumers switch to using Card Tap and other contactless payments faster than anyone could have predicted. FiServ did a study in August of 3,000 US adults and found that 68% had used a digital wallet for payments at retail stores and restaurants. This is 10% growth from 2020 and more than 50% from 2019 from other studies FiServ had done. While the US has lagged from the adoption of digital wallets compared…

December 20, 2021

Credit card fraud to face Billions in losses over the next decade for businesses

While credit card transactions are going up dramatically, so is credit card fraud. The Nilson Report states that by 2030 credit card sales will hit $79 trillion globally, however businesses are set to lose an estimated $49 billion to fraud. While there are many protections available and being used by most retailers, e-commerce is still the biggest target for fraudsters. And even though successes are made to update shopping carts, and gateways, fraudsters are becoming more sophisticated in their efforts as well. Another fraud issue that is gaining steam is so called “Friendly” or “first party fraud”. This is when a cardholder claim is made by a family member or…

November 18, 2021

6 Ways to Protect Your Business This Holiday Season

While fraud prevention is year-round, business owners should be especially vigilant during the holidays. Remember the Target data breach, when hackers stole data from more than 40 million customers during the 2013 holiday season? Since then, online sales have increased by more than 100% with much of that growth happening in 2020, and fraud rates have increased by 55% since the start of the pandemic. Here are six tips to prevent fraud and keep your business, and your customers safe:   1. Upgrade Your Credit Card Technology EMV and NFC (Near Field Communication) are now the global standards for chip card and digital transactions. The Fraud Liability Shift took place in…

October 6, 2021

Businesses Need to Update Older Terminals to Terminals That Meet the New PCI 5.0 Standard

Businesses that have resisted upgrading their equipment that does not accept Chip Cards, Card Tap and Digital Wallets, must upgrade by the end of the year. This is to comply with the new PCI Compliance Standard 5.0. Also, businesses that are using terminals that do not have the ability to accept chip cards, card tap and digital wallets (Apple pay, Google Wallet, etc.) could lead to security issues and the possibility of losing Chargeback disputes. Visa and MasterCard already have policies in place that if a card is just magnetically read and a chargeback is initiated, that chargeback will go through uncontested. It is their way of forcing merchants to…

August 23, 2021

MasterCard to Phase Out Magnetic Strips on its Cards

MasterCard has announced that it will be phasing out magnetic strips on all of its credit and debit cards over the next 10 years to have strictly chips and contactless payments. Magnetic strips have been a card standard since the 1960’s. The transition will start in 2024. Magnetic strips were a huge improvement over the flat bed imprinting machines and having to look up card numbers on reams of paper to make sure it was not listed stolen, or had other issues. Then came the EMV Chip which holds card holder information more securely in the 1990’s. MasterCard has found that although the imbedded chips on credit and credit cards…

July 23, 2021

Verifone VX 520 Being Sunsetted

The Verifone VX 520 terminal ceased production on April 30th 2021. The reason for this was that the terminal does not have the memory capacity for the newest PCI Compliance Standards. What does this mean for those businesses using a VX 520? The answer is that those businesses will need to upgrade their terminal to one that meets the newest PCI Compliance Standards. The newest standard is one that is completely PCI 5.0 certified and will be compliant until 2029. This also means that if a business has not updated to a newer terminal by their PCI anniversary date, they will fall out of compliance. This could lead to security…