How do I choose a credit card processing company?” is a tough question for any merchant, especially a high-risk one. This decision can affect your brand, customer satisfaction, and eventually, your bottom line. Payments typically are the last interaction that a client has with your company, and it is, therefore, imperative to end this in the perfect note. However, finding the best payment processor with the services, products, features, and prices that are ideal for your business can be a difficult task. This can even be worse if you’re not capable of discerning a good from a lousy processing company. Therefore, below are the top questions to ask your potential or current credit card processing company.
What can you offer me that another processor can’t?
Experience doesn’t always matter. You may find a processing company that has been operating for only a few years, having all the services, products, business support, and features that your company needs. They can even offer your business more compared to another high-risk merchant processing company that has been in existence for over 30 years. However, you’ll need a company with credibility, steadfast reputation, consistency, and a proven track record. Since most of the contracts go for three to four years, remember to go through their references. Contact their current clients and inquire about their experience with the company. Go online and confirm their reviews as your research on their case studies.
What forms of payment methods can you process?
Some processors will only allow you to take a credit card by swiping it on their technology and forcing you to buy another product to take other methods like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and contactless debit transactions. Discuss money grab. Other providers will offer credit and debit machines accepting EMV chip dip payments, NFC tap payments, and mobile wallets all on the same payment terminal for low monthly rental fees. Since these are some of the essential terminals on the market, don’t settle for anything less!
What fraud protecting services do you offer?
Taking EMV (Europay, Mastercard, Visa) can significantly lower card-present fraud because of the many security features such as the PIN entry. If you have an e-commerce website, card-not-present fraud prevention features like the AVS (Address Verification System), mandatory entry of card expiry date, and CID (Card Verification Value) or CVV are vital, as they will verify the owners, as well as processors of the cards in use. Your merchant service provider must have all these security standards, and go a notch higher to customize additional security features based on the needs of your business.
Do you help with my business being PCI-compliant?
PCI or Payment Card Industry standards ensure that your business will accept, process, store, or transmit the cardholder information in a secure system. This will help your business avoid all forms of theft and fraud, both online and in-person. The PCI is a simple checklist and questionnaire to be answered annually. Ensure that the PCI compliance fee is also reasonable.
