Category: Uncategorized

March 29th, 2023 by Elma Jane

NTC Business Partner Welcome Presentation

Posted in Uncategorized

March 29th, 2023 by Elma Jane

Protect your business from the risk of fraudulent activities with Payment Card Industry / Digital Security Standards (PCI/DSS). With this service, you can ensure that your business meets all the PCI/DSS requirements. Requirements differ depending on your transaction volume.

This service is important especially when you’re offering various payment methods for your customers. Keep in mind that even with PCI compliance, a data breach is still possible. You’ll need to pay for this breach to be fixed.

As an NTC client, it’s advisable to reach out if you happen to experience a data breach. In some cases, you may need to work with forensic experts to identify the main culprit of the breach. Most of the cost associated with the breach may be incurred by the service provider depending on your compliance.

Posted in Uncategorized

February 9th, 2022 by Admin

John Stewart
January 17, 2022
https://www.digitaltransactions.net/trends-like-open-banking-and-bnpl-will-sustain-e-commerces-hot-streak-a-report-says/

Open banking, single-click checkout wallets, and the hot buy now, pay later trend will all help drive e-commerce volume worldwide in the coming five years, predicts Juniper Research in a report released Monday. This momentum is likely to push online sales long after the short-term impetus from the pandemic subsides, Juniper says.

E-commerce volume totaled $4.9 trillion globally in 2021, a figure the United Kingdom-based research firm forecasts will reach $7.5 trillion in 2026, when China will control a 37% share. Wider availability of multiple e-commerce channels, including mobile devices, will propel the overall growth worldwide, Juniper says. But along with the boom in e-commerce will come a corresponding growth in fraud via identity theft, account takeovers, and fraudulent chargebacks, the report warns. China, for example, will account for more than 40% of fraud losses worldwide in 2025, at more than $12 billion, Juniper forecasts.

Open banking is a trend by which fintechs can verify balances in consumers’ accounts and transfer funds to pay for online purchases. As standards bodies work to promulgate standards for this business, e-commerce payment providers “should … partner with specialists in … specific emerging payment areas to keep pace with changing merchant expectations around acceptance types,” the research firm says in its release, referring to digital wallets and crypto as well as open banking.


Open banking has taken on a higher profile in the global payments market with efforts by both of the global card networks to acquire firms that specialize in this area. Visa Inc. has acquired Tink AB, while Mastercard Inc. bought Aiia and Finicity Corp.

Physical goods will continue to dominate e-commerce spending, the report says, accounting for 82% of payment value by 2026. To tap into the trend, Juniper advises, payments providers should support buy now, pay later plans, which allow consumers to split purchases into four equal installments paid over a six-week period at no interest. BNPL is becoming more controversial, however, as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has launched an investigation of the option and as reports emerge that consumers with multiple accounts are more likely to miss a payment.

While still a big trend, e-commerce sales in the U.S. market cooled significantly last year as the pandemic effect lost some of its force. Third-quarter sales in 2021 reached $214.6 billion, up 6.6% year-over-year, according to the Census Bureau, which tracks retail sales. That follows an 8.9% rise in the second quarter and three straight quarters with increases of 32% or more. Fourth-quarter 2021 results are not yet available.

Posted in Credit card Processing, Credit Card Reader Terminal, Credit Card Security, Digital Wallet Privacy, e-commerce & m-commerce, Financial Services, Mail Order Telephone Order, Merchant Account Services News Articles, Merchant Services Account, Mobile Payments, Mobile Point of Sale, Point of Sale, Small Business Improvement, Smartphone, Uncategorized, Visa MasterCard American Express Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Best Practices For Merchants
January 14th, 2022 by Admin

Visa Acceptance Cloud (VAC), is set to revolutionize the way businesses accept payments from their customers. Read the full article here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220112006011/en/

The Future of the Point of Sale Is Here: Visa Pioneers Cloud-based Payment Acceptance

  • Visa Acceptance Cloud creates more seamless, affordable point of sale opportunities for small businesses, retailers, fintechs, and the businesses that support them

January 13, 2022 09:15 AM Eastern Standard Time

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Today Visa (NYSE: V) announced a new platform, Visa Acceptance Cloud (VAC), set to revolutionize the way businesses accept payments from their customers. Following the success of the company’s popular “Tap to Phone” solution, VAC will let acquirers, payment service providers, point of sale (POS) manufacturers, and Internet of Things (IoT) players move payment processing software from being embedded in each hardware device to being universally accessible in the cloud.

“NOBAL‘s intelligent mirror in partnership with VAC from Visa provides payment experiences on our mirror without the expense and expertise required for embedded hardware modules, helping us push the future of retail in new ways.”Tweet this

Already live across six geographies, VAC will help innovators transform almost any device into a cloud-connected payment terminal, while providing seamless, cloud-based software updates, robust analytics, and network services from Visa. Since VAC runs on Visa’s data centers, it also offers leading data security capabilities.

“Cloud acceptance is the future of payments,” said Mary Kay Bowman, senior vice president and global head of payment and platform products, Visa. “Cloud-connected POS lets sellers accept payments across a range of devices quickly, simply, and safely, whether at an unattended kiosk in a hotel, a mirror in a high-end retail store or virtual in-home gym, or a smart phone in the hands of a small seller with a roadside newsstand.”

In January 2020, Visa first showcased the power of “Tap to Phone,” an industry-first solution that transforms current generation Android smartphones and tablets into contactless point of sale terminals. Tap to Phone was Visa’s first offering that let sellers accept payments on the devices they already own, just by downloading an app. As of December 2021, there were more than 300,000 devices across 54 countries using Tap to Phone.

Expanding beyond phones, Visa Acceptance Cloud enables any POS or connected device to seamlessly accept payments and to incorporate a range of added services, including buy now, pay later, fraud management, Rapid Seller Onboarding, and advanced data analytics. The ongoing pilots in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia cater to a variety of use cases, including retailers and restaurants in Australia through Visa’s work with U.S.-based fintech, Bleu, NOBAL Technologies’ smart mirror and public trains in Brazil.

“Bleu is working with Visa to bring seamless payments to businesses across Australia for the very first time,” said Sesie Bonsi, President & CEO, Bleu. “While the average business owner can spend as much as $1,000 on POS devices, plus countless hours and more money on time consuming certification processes, moving to Visa Acceptance Cloud removes the barriers of traditional hardware and burdens of device-bound kernel certifications, making it easier for the independent business that we serve to deliver touchless payment options to their customers through any connected device.”

“Retailers are looking to enhance their in-store customer experience to meet the speed and convenience of the online and in-store checkout experiences,” says Bill Roberts, CEO, NOBAL Technologies. “NOBAL‘s intelligent mirror in partnership with VAC from Visa provides payment experiences on our mirror without the expense and expertise required for embedded hardware modules, helping us push the future of retail in new ways.”

“VAC is a universal platform that helps open up acceptance for all – by freeing our leading technology partners to innovate. On one end of the spectrum, cloud acceptance helps drive inclusion for more small sellers who want to offer digital payments. On the other end, Visa Acceptance Cloud enables advanced shopping and buying experiences that will be central to the future of retail for businesses of all shapes and sizes,” continued Bowman. “Moving acceptance to the cloud opens up the possibility of so much innovation from the entire payments ecosystem. This is only the beginning.”

To learn more about VAC, please visit our website or contact visaacceptancecloud@visa.com.

About Visa

Visa (NYSE: V) is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating more than 215 billion payments transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. We believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift everyone everywhere and see access as foundational to the future of money movement. Learn more at Visa.com.

Contacts

Media Contact:
Emily Scheer
Press@visa.com

Posted in Uncategorized

January 14th, 2022 by Admin

M-commerce. As smartphones and tablets take over our lives brick-and-mortar stores and e-commerce sites are gearing up for the upcoming surge in shoppers to provide the ‘omni channel’ experience. Today shoppers use their smartphone and tablet devices to research their purchases, read reviews and ask about items others have purchased on social networking sites. This holiday season will see a rise in spending over previous years and mobile commerce alone is expected to rise to $17 Trillion by 2017. So what are retailers doing to upgrade their customers experience? One avenue is mobile point of sale that let’s a company extend it’s sales force with global reach. Tablets are mainly used, although smartphones will work as well, and access to the company’s entire inventory can be accessed anywhere on the planet. To close the sale, electronic payments can be processed at the point of sale with a credit card swipe reader. For larger companies with a local presence, new services are allowing that omni channel shopping experience with in store pickups, returns and exchanges.

Walmart for example now ships 10 percent of its orders from the store to the door. In store pickup is big this holiday season as well. Walmart and Target are set to facilitate in store pickups for e-commerce shoppers allowing them to bypass long checkout lines and take advantage of last minute sales. Much of this is in response to e-commerce giant Amazon. Amazon has many distribution centers but even with those, they can only ship in advance of Christmas. In store pickup can facilitate Christmas eve purchases that online e-commerce purchases cannot.

Much has to be done for smaller merchants to rise to that level of delivery. Software is needed to combine in store inventory with that of online inventory available. Stores also need equipment and space to give packing employees room to work orders. Sales staff need training to help shoppers place orders and even merchandising is typically brought in house where brick and mortar stores and e-commerce buying has been separate.

Posted in Uncategorized

July 26th, 2021 by Admin

Helpful tips to help you combat fraudulent auth testing

The pandemic accelerated both merchants’ and their customers’ transition to a digital marketplace. More than one year later, with more and more transactions occurring online, merchants are at an increasingly higher risk for fraudulent attacks.

As eCommerce continues to cement its foothold in the marketplace, fraudulent authorization testing remains a prevalent risk to business owners. Auth testing or Account Enumeration, as it is more commonly known, occurs when fraudsters use stolen credit card numbers to test small purchases on a merchant’s payment system to see if a transaction gets authorized. If it does, then they start racking up bigger charges on the validated stolen card numbers.

Making matters worse, fraudsters can test hundreds to tens of thousands of stolen payment card numbers on a single digital checkout in the blink of an eye with the help of software applications called bots. Those transactions, no matter how small, quickly add up as every attempted transaction comes with an authorization cost.

Small and medium businesses are often preyed on by these fraudsters, sometimes from a lack of preparedness. Prior to the pandemic, a study by Emailage of more than 1,000 North American SMBs revealed that 48 percent didn’t believe they were large enough to be a target, while 38 percent didn’t see fraud as a top business concern.1 Remember, customers – both small and large – are best prepared through a multilayered approach. We encourage you to visit these tips offered by Elavon’s Loss Prevention Team below. As a reminder, if your customers are Converge users, many of the preventive tools below are available through the Converge solution. Please refer to the downloadable guide in The Learning Center (TLC) for more information.


1. Use these fraud deterrence tools. Consumers’ expectations continue to grow for a more seamless, safe way to shop online. While these tools are part of an evolving process, some of the more common tools currently used are:

• Firewalls – Network security systems that monitor and control incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predetermined security rules and transaction parameters.

• CAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA – A program or system aimed at distinguishing human input from bots with images.

• Honeypots – Decoy systems that operate alongside production systems that lure in fraudsters.
• Device fingerprinting – Technology that detects the originating device to help identify bots.
• Key stroke recognition – Another biometric tool that uses the unique manner in which an individual types to recognize as human and not a bot.

2. Ensure HTML source code is hidden. Using an outside vendor to develop eCommerce websites could expose customers to fraudsters. Coders may leave HTML source code exposed or accessible, leaving the door wide open for fraudulent auth testing, so it is important to ensure that source code is well hidden. While tools like CAPTCHA can help, it may require the help of a developer to disguise these codes from fraudsters. Our Developer Portal can help.

3. Require more information when setting up pay fields. Many pay fields only require the credit card information, but adding email addresses, phone numbers and cardholder addresses makes auth testing less likely as fraudsters need to build a much longer script with all that additional information to obtain an authorization. Our Software Technical Support (STS) team can install tools such as Address Verification Service (AVS) to help confirm the required additional information in the fields is a match.

4. Continually monitor transactions. Since authorization testing often happens in large groups of transactions within a small period of time, customers should set hourly or daily velocity limits within their payment acceptance platform. The goal is to specify an upper limit of expected transactions to occur within the selected timeframe to a specific IP address. Business owners should continually review high-ticket transactions or unusually low-ticket transactions. They can set a transaction threshold that, if the transaction seems oddly low or much higher than their average transactions, can automatically decline the transaction or pend for later manual review prior to attempting the authorization.

5. Scan systems. Check for malware or spyware regularly.

1 SMB Merchants Are Too Complacent When It Comes to Payment Fraud, My Total Retail

Posted in Uncategorized

January 7th, 2021 by Admin

Technology can be your friend

Technology can be scary, so can change.  When you combine the two most people run.  Technology can be extremely helpful in growing your business.  From Omni Commerce merchant accounts, where you can combine all your processing into one merchant account, to social media marketing where you can reach a larger audience, and even expanding to online sales without a website.  Having the right team to help you navigate and keep you up to date on all these new trends is crucial.  Here are some tips to help you learn these new techniques and stay ahead to the trend.

Be Proactive, Notify Customers of Issues

Streaming data can be analyzed from multiple sources in real-time, to enable proactive customer service. This could include data from the website, such as a customer’s clicks, as well as mobile app clicks and shipment information. Specialized tools called complex event processing systems are often used to correlate all the data in real-time, analyze it based on the rules defined in the tool and take actions to notify the customer, another application, or someone internal to the business. Retailers can use these systems to reduce call volumes and resolve issues resulting in happier shoppers and higher revenue.

Create Service-level Targets

For the retailer’s customer service to be stellar, targets need to be defined for all key operations such as wait times, same customer calling within a specific period of time and time for one call. These targets can also define service level agreements, where appropriate. These targets should be linked with automated alerts that get triggered when they are not met and used to notify the appropriate staff to resolve. This will help maintain the desired service levels. Most customer service solutions, have a feature to create automated alerts, though not every retailer enables this feature. It is not that difficult if a step-by-step approach is used: (1) Define the appropriate targets and (2) create alerts to resolve the issues quickly.

360 Degree View of Customers

The concept of obtaining visibility to all the customer interactions and taking action based on that has been around for several years, but still it has not been widely adopted. The goal is not only to align customer interactions in different systems like campaigns, recommendations and social networks, but also to correlate this data to determine the next best action to serve the customer. If a retailer knows these activities about a customer, the benefits such as product recommendations are huge. For small retailers, this can be accomplished by first integrating the different systems in their environment and gradually building the correlations to get a full view of the customer.

Empower Reps to Resolve Issues

The customer should not be transferred from one rep to the next to resolve the issue. The reps need to be empowered to resolve the issue. This typically requires providing access to the reps to different parts of the system. The reps need to have the power to refund money up to a certain limit, give away free products or services or issue a one-time savings, such as free shipping or 25 percent off on the next order.

Enhanced Search

Customer service representatives usually search a customer’s history before working on the issue. In most cases, the search is limited to past interactions with service reps. It is important however, to search through all customer communication, including audio files for phone calls, chat interactions and any email communications. Without this enhanced search, the reps are getting an incomplete view of the issue, leaving the customer frustrated. Speech recognition tools enable voice files to be searched or they can be tagged with the relevant keywords manually when the rep is working on the issue over the phone. Software solutions are available for searching through audio files and some come bundled with customer-relationship and ticketing solutions.

Facilitate Feedback

Great customer service can only be improved if it incorporates improvements based on shopper feedback. It is therefore important to make it as easy as possible to gather feedback positive and negative from customers and visitors. If a retailer uses a support ticket system, then the customer should be able to provide feedback on the ticket, just like they would review a product after purchase.

Improve Speed of Response

Most of us have heard a customer service representative say that his systems are running slow, resulting in increased wait time. If this problem is so common, why are retailers not taking action to fix it? It requires an investment for sure. But the money saved by serving more customers in the same amount of time or increased revenue because the customers get answers faster, could make it worthwhile. The easiest technical option to improve the speed of response is to move data that is accessed most frequently, such as customer profile information, product catalog and return policies into an in-memory system to reduce the data access time. Additionally, if a rep has to assemble information from multiple systems (i.e., billing, fulfillment, order data) before answering a customer’s question, consider assembling and loading that information into the in-memory system to make processing of queries faster.

Keep Reps Aware of Updates

Retailers should always ensure that customer service personnel knows about important changes to the business, such as site design updates, new features, new products, and new campaigns, as well as temporary issues, such as shipping delays. The reps need to see the release notes and understand what is being changed in the environment before they start receiving questions from shoppers.

Monitor Social Networks

A negative post on a social network can do serious damage to a retailer’s brand. Consumers know that. Hence customer service teams cannot ignore social networks. They must maintain a live feed dashboard that shows the sentiments on different social networks and what is trending. Based on this, action needs to be taken. Retailers can track this using sentiment analysis that is available in several products.

Up-to-date Knowledge Base

Many retailers track customer queries by creating tickets. These tickets are sometimes handled manually bad, sometimes in an Excel spreadsheet still bad and sometimes in an online ticketing system good. The objective is not only to resolve the customer issue, but also to avoid spending time responding to the same issue later. This can be achieved if the resolutions are updated in the online ticketing system and made available to the customer in a knowledge base. Customers scan search for the issue and if they do not find the resolution they can contact customer service.

Posted in Uncategorized

October 9th, 2020 by Admin

When you are first setting up a retail or an eCommerce endeavor, few decisions will be of as much importance as the payment provider that you choose. Your payment provider will handle each and every card transaction your online company makes, and if it doesn’t function properly, or if it has a lot of hidden fees, such as old legacy systems with long term contracts, you can be setting your business up to fail before you ever get started.

So, we are going to explain to you what you should be looking for when you reach this crucial decision in the setup phase of your business, and we will help you find a payment provider that meets your needs perfectly and sets you up to succeed in the business world.

As a general rule of thumb, there are three main factors that you really need to consider when you go to choose who you will be working with: The people involved in the transaction, the fees associated with each transaction, and how the transaction is handled behind the scenes. There are some smaller tidbits that can make a specific provider a better or worse choice, but those three factors will allow you to narrow your search down to a select few of top competitors that will truly help your company succeed.

The Parties Involved

Besides your bank and the customer’s bank, there are three different factors that go into every single one of your transactions, and a payment provider works with all three of them. There’s you, your customer, and the technology acting as a bridge between the two of you. We’ll go into more detail about all that, now.

The Customer

With this part of the transaction, we are really talking about the “issuing bank”. That’s your customer’s bank, and they handle lending the customer the money to make a purchase on your site, and they issue the card that the customer uses to make that purchase. This is your customer’s main form of interaction with the transaction process, and it’s one of the most important factors since it’s what starts the transaction in the first place. However, you have no control over this factor, and you can simply ensure that the technology, which we’ll talk about soon, makes their part of the transaction as smooth as possible.

The Merchant

This is you and your part in the transaction. You function as the merchant that the customer is engaging with, and in order to do that, you need a merchant bank to partner with and work as your company’s bank. A merchant bank functions differently than the bank you use in your day to day life. Instead of issuing you funds in advance for credit purchases and managing your checking and savings accounts, a merchant bank takes in your customers’ payments for you, and then puts those payments into a special merchant account that is a lot like a business’s checking account. Without a merchant bank, you won’t be able to succeed in the long-term with eCommerce.

The Technology Solution

Your technology, and the company handling it, is what makes a transaction possible in the first place, and there are two parts to this imperative factor: The payment processor and the payment gateway.

Processor

The payment processor is what actually handles the transaction. It moves the money between the different parties and delivers it to the banks and accounts involved. If your processor is subpar, your customer’s transaction experience will be, too. You need an up-to-date payment processor that functions smoothly and without any hassle placed on you or your customer to ensure that each customer enjoys a seamless transaction.

Gateway

The payment gateway is essentially what sends the transaction information to the payment processor. It links to your site’s shopping cart feature, and when a customer buys something, it connects to the payment processor and begins the transaction. In order to ensure that your transactions are smooth and effortless, this technological asset needs to be competent and able to easily satisfy your customers without being apparent.

How the Transaction Process Happens

The transaction process is fairly complicated, but it all takes place in a matter of seconds. In fact, it’s usually seemingly instantaneous.

Once a purchase is made, the payment gateway encrypts the transaction data to protect your customer and your business, and then it asks the customer’s bank if it will advance the funds for the customer’s purchase. If yes, the payment will be sent to your merchant account, and if not, the transaction will be denied and ended until a resolution can be found.

Once that step is completed, the funds typically end up being accessible by you the second your merchant bank acquires them and places them in your account, but you may be forced to keep a certain amount in the account to make sure you can cover any returns that pop up.

This part is not instantaneous. It can take a couple days to complete this part of the process.

Transaction Fees

This is easily the factor that you’ll want to pay attention to the most, because a lot of merchant service providers are downright misleading when they quote your rates, and you need to get a firm understanding of how a company sets up its fees to know what to actually expect from your bill.

Most often, companies will quote something like 1.8% rates to interest you and appeal to your more frugal side, but then they’ll apply all sorts of hidden fees that raise that rate as high as 11% without notifying you properly. As you can imagine, that can make your bill a bit more than what you thought it would be.

There are three rate models that are most often used:

Flat-Rate

You’re given a specific amount to pay, and whether that covers your total fees or not, that’s what you pay. You could be overpaying tremendously if you accept a quite a few low cost cards vs. the higher cost cards. The processor is banking on your acceptance of these lower cards to ensure all costs are covered.

Interchange Plus Pricing

This takes the interchange fee you pay and adds a small fixed rate on top of it. It’s not as consistent as a flat-rate fee because of the sheer amount of interchange fees out there and the number of different credit cards with all of the various reward and incentive programs.

Tiered Pricing

This is when the provider creates a few tiers of fees and charges you based on the tier your fees are in rather than each individual fee. The only bad thing about this is that the provider decides which fees go into which tier.

Other Important Things to Consider

Does your processor provide Data Security/PCI protection? What about financial breach protection, in the event you are breached?

Any business or other entity that stores, processes or transmits cardholder data must ensure that their processes meet the Payment Card Industry / Data Security Standard (PCI/DSS). Failure to do so can result in heavy fines being levied.

Understanding PCI/DSS

The PCI/DSS is a global standard defining acceptable practice for any entity involved in the storage, transmission or processing of cardholder data.

In recognition of the sensitive, confidential and valuable nature of this data the standard imposes strict regulations which must be met in full. The full requirements are detailed but are covered by 12 broad requirements. These are grouped into 6 broad control objectives as follows:

1. Build and Maintain a Secure Network and Systems
– Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect data
– Do not use vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords and other security parameters

2. Protect Cardholder Data
– Protect stored data (use encryption)
– Encrypt transmission of cardholder data and sensitive information across public networks

3. Maintain a Vulnerability Management Program
– Use and regularly update anti-virus software
– Develop and maintain secure systems and applications

4. Implement Strong Access Control Measures
-Restrict access to data by business need-to-know
-Assign a unique ID to each person with computer access
-Restrict physical access to cardholder data

5. Regularly Monitor and Test Networks
-Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data
-Regularly test security systems and processes

6. Maintain an Information Security Policy
-Maintain a policy that addresses Information Security

Any entity handling card transactions must meet the standard and be able to demonstrate (certify) that it does so. The level of certification is flexible and depends on how transactions are processed and in what volume.

A Summary of Benefits

Achieving full compliance with PCI/DSS standards is more than an obligation. It delivers genuine benefits to businesses:

– Lessen the risk of fraudulent transactions

– Prevent security breaches

-Lessen the impact should a breach occur

– Reduce your business’ exposure to risk and liability

– Provide peace of mind for your customers

– Avoid the negative PR associated with data loss

Why are These Requirements in Place?

Card transactions have grown enormously in recent years as cards become the number 1 preferred form of payment. Since no physical money is handled or exchanged as part of these transactions they are dependent on the transfer of data.

That data therefore becomes sensitive and valuable and must be protected. Failure to protect this data can lead to fraud and theft. These crimes often impact both the card holder and the merchant directly. They can also damage or even destroy the reputation of businesses or organizations involved in hacks or data breaches.

More widely card fraud has the long-term detrimental effect of eroding consumer confidence and trust – both in the individual companies affected and in the card payment industry more widely.

Millions of consumers and organizations worldwide are choosing to pay by card. And millions of businesses, professionals, traders and organizations are accepting and handling these payments. Instead of allowing an ad-hoc approach where each business sets its own level of security the PCI / DSS was imposed. This ensures a uniformly high level of data security throughout the worldwide card payment industry.

Keep your Data Secure – Don’t get caught without PCI Data Breach Protection

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit card Processing, Credit Card Security, e-commerce & m-commerce, Electronic Payments, Financial Services, Internet Payment Gateway, Mail Order Telephone Order, Merchant Account Services News Articles, Merchant Services Account, Mobile Payments, nationaltransaction.com, Payment Card Industry PCI Security, Uncategorized, Visa MasterCard American Express Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,

September 29th, 2020 by Admin

An opportunity for you to join one of the greats. We are actively seeking account executives that want to build a recurring income of unlimited potential. Work from anywhere (including remote) in both U.S. and Canadian territories. We offer generous commissions that pay out each month for the life of the account. We offer wholesale pricing on terminals, software, equipment and supplies giving you the ability for additional revenue opportunities. We want to be your partners for success.

Why us? National Transaction Corp (NTC) is a leading, Florida based, merchant account provider proudly supporting clients in both the US and Canada. With over 23 years of experience in the electronic payment environment, dedicated 24/7 live in-house customer and ISO/Agent support, On Site Technology teams, competitive compensation plans, multiple banks and processors to choose from, and flexible merchant pricing options, we have what it takes to help you build long term residual portfolios.

Even before the Coronavirus pandemic, the world of payment acceptance was rapidly changing. Since the pandemic, businesses were sent into a tailspin, trying to adjust. Our ability to underwrite Omni-Commerce accounts, saved many of our ISO and Agent Partners from having to start over when their customers converted to E-commerce based solutions.

Specializing in High Risk Travel, and partnered with one of the largest travel associations, we have serviced thousands of travel merchant accounts. We know how to navigate high risk and large volume merchants through underwriting challenges with huge success. Most of the times, we can even prevent or eliminate the need for reserves, keeping more cash flow in the hands of your merchants.

Because we want you to succeed, we have a dedicated team to help assist you with the sales process if needed. We will be available to you should you need us.

Posted in Uncategorized

September 14th, 2020 by Admin

Credit Card Magnetic Strip

For financial institu­tions of all sizes, real-time transfers are likely to be a competitive necessity. But small banks must work out how to balance operational headaches with potential advantages.

It has been generally acknowledged that real-time payments can provide some significant benefits to financial institutions. But for smaller FIs, they come with some very real challenges.

Unlike the case with the current standard for automated clearing house daily payment fulfillment, supporting real-time or near real-time payments requires a true 24x7x365 environment. In addition, companies need to have the appropriate reserves on hand and the necessary staff to support real-time payments monitoring and administration.

It is important for smaller FIs to understand the true requirements, costs, and solutions associated with real-time payments adoption. Additionally, they need to know what is available now for real-time payments, and what could be coming down the road.

The Landscape

Today, real-time payment networks are being deployed around the globe. These networks allow financial transfers to occur in near real time, permitting a recipient to have access to funds transferred by a remitter within seconds of transfer initiation.

An important aspect of this process is that the recipient will have unrestricted access to transferred funds. What this means is that after a remitter has initiated a funds transfer, possession of those funds is controlled completely by the recipient. In other words, the remitter cannot recall them. What’s more, settlement of the whole transfer operation is immediate.

This capability contrasts sharply with traditional settlement methods, which delay settlement completion for hours or even days after a transfer.

This is a model typically followed by most funds-transfer operations. For instance, payments via checks or most wallet based payment networks are settled via the ACH network. Historically, ACH settlement files are swapped among FIs on a nightly basis. Until this occurs and the involved banks or credit unions have adjusted their internal balances to account for ACH transactions, transferred funds cannot be used by recipients without restriction.

The main reason recipients can’t fully take possession of the funds is that, until those nightly settlements have occurred, remitters can implicitly cancel the transfers. A remitter could, for example, write a check to a recipient and then simply withdraw all funds from the source account. Thus, the nightly settlement for the associated transfer will fail because there are no funds available to support it.

This basic remitter cancellation feature is part of many funds-transfer approaches that cause delays in settlement for a period of time. There have been some attempts to shorten the delays. For example, NACHA is offering same day settlement, permitting ACH settlement to occur on the same day as the transfer initiation. NACHA has also proposed an additional daily settlement window to allow multiple ACH settlement operations to occur each day.

However, despite these efforts, there is still a delay that could possibly result in interrupted funds transfers.

The RTP Network

Until recently, the only “true” real-time funds-transfer network in the United States was the Real Time Payments (RTP) network. Created and operated by The Clearing House Payments Co., which is owned by most of the country’s largest banks, this solution provides customers of member institutions access to RTP services. These include support for real-time transfers and payments with immediate settlement of all transfer operations.

Rather than directly using ACH settlement, RTP member banks instead settle among themselves using a common general ledger. This ledger is, in turn, supported by a common reserve account maintained by the Federal Reserve, to which all member banks contribute. Its members are required to maintain minimum reserve levels. If these reserve levels fall below a certain amount, additional funds must be deposited.

Since most RTP member banks tend to have large numbers of deposit holders, a sizable number of U.S. customer banking accounts can participate in the real-time payment capabilities it offers.

However, there is a significant number of accounts associated with smaller FIs across the nation that are not affiliated with RTP. For these customers, access to real-time payments may not come as easily. While RTP does offer real-time payment services to smaller FIs that partner with one of its larger member banks or authorized portal organizations, its outreach efforts have been marginally successful at best.

Unsurprisingly, many smaller FIs have reservations about joining a network operated by their larger banking competitors. Though RTP has offered assurances to smaller FIs to further entice them to join, many continue to be reluctant to do so.

FedNow

Recognizing the need to extend real-time payment services to all of the nation’s FIs regardless of size, the Federal Reserve last year announced the creation of its FedNow network. Initial estimates by the Federal Reserve suggest the network will be available by 2023 or 2024, though some industry experts have been skeptical of this timeframe.

The FedNow announcement was greeted enthusiastically by most smaller FIs, as the Federal Reserve is generally considered to be more of an “honest broker” or impartial operator of the payments network as compared to a private company or group.

This helped alleviate the concern that smaller FIs would be disadvantaged if they allied with RTP. However, though the news was positively received, some smaller FIs were disappointed with the four-to-five-year projected lead time before FedNow would be available. As a related correlation, RTP announced an upsurge in interest from smaller FIs following the Fed’s announcement.

Although FedNow seems to provide a promising path forward for smaller FIs, banks and credit unions with fewer resources will be challenged to take advantage of the services provided by the solution.

One of the key problems is the issue of reserves. All FedNow settlement will be real-time gross settlement (RTGS), not net settlement. This means that every single transaction will be immediately and irrevocably settled by FedNow.

This is a stricter process than net settlement, which permits a financial institution to be deficient in required reserves for individual transactions as long as proper reserves are available at the end of a specified settlement window.

Thus, each FedNow participant must monitor its reserve level on a constant, round-the-clock basis to ensure reserves are adequately maintained at all times. If an FI does not have the reserves, the FedNow platform will automatically fail the attempted transaction.

For those FIs not currently required to maintain reserve accounts with the Federal Reserve due to their size, there is also an additional consideration. For these smaller FIs, maintaining a reserve account to support RTGS would be a new operational obligation with additional costs to acquire and commit the necessary funds to cover the new reserve requirements.

Staffing may also be a major issue. Maintaining the staff to cover both normal banking hours as well as the additional 24x7x365 operations will present an increase in workforce and attendant training.

To fully accommodate the FedNow processing demands, these institutions must not only maintain 24x7x365 monitoring staff, they must also have the authority to refresh FedNow reserves if or when those amounts drop below certain levels.

Additionally, there are service expectations to consider with the extended hours. For example, does 24x7x365 operations mean that customer support will also be extended for related issues? FIs will need to decide how they will handle this from both a staffing and training angle.

Anticipating that this would likely be a burden for smaller banks and credit unions, the Federal Reserve is planning to allow participating FedNow institutions to designate service providers that can act on their behalf. These third parties will be allowed to submit or receive payment instructions as well as settle accounts of correspondent institutions.

FedNow regulators have not issued any rules or requirements governing the types of organizations that would qualify to be service providers and the type of oversight that they would be subject to by the Federal Reserve. However, these guidelines will presumably be updated as the availability date for FedNow approaches. Regardless of the regulations ultimately issued, smaller FIs that choose to outsource their FedNow operations will also incur the additional fees associated with it.

Another key concern with FedNow is its proposed interoperability with other systems, like the RTP network. While the Federal Reserve has confirmed this is a high priority for the network, it has also admitted to its complexity and that it may be difficult to have this functionality available during FedNow’s initial release.

In addition, though the Fed has suggested it is open to exploring solutions for true interoperability between FedNow and other payment networks, The Clearing House has expressed its intention to continue expanding RTP to minimize the need for FIs to sign up for FedNow. Smaller FIs will need to keep this interoperability conflict in mind as they consider their long-term real-time payments strategies.

Do They Need FedNow?

Ultimately, each community bank or credit union will need to decide if FedNow makes sense for its institution.

The Federal Reserve has indicated that FedNow participants will each be assessed a portion of the network’s overall operating costs so it can run as a financially self-sustaining platform. Therefore, regardless of the other FedNow issues that smaller FIs must address, there will be additional costs to offer FedNow.

For some FIs, these additional costs could potentially price them out of the network, especially if they have current services that may help provide a semblance of real-time payment capabilities. For example, some FIs currently offer same-day ACH services as their “real-time payments solution,” with the expectation that account holders will be satisfied with unrestricted access to funds if they can be available on the same day as payment initiation.

What’s more, this service could become an even more compelling option after NACHA adds the additional settlement window to its daily processing. Some smaller FIs may determine that “reasonably fast payments,” while not truly real time, are good enough.

It is easy to see how smaller FIs that position themselves as service leaders or innovators may view FedNow services as a marketing advantage, one that distinguishes them in their local markets. However, it is also just as likely that the more conservative FIs may only embrace FedNow if their customers or members demand the service.

The Future

Many of the challenges associated with FedNow are still conjectural. However, it does seem safe to assume that the Federal Reserve is monitoring issues that could diminish its capabilities—or attractiveness—for those FIs that may wish to access FedNow services.

For example, the after-hours liquidity to support RTGS has been suggested as a possible stumbling block for smaller FIs. This could be addressed in a number of ways. One idea would be to use existing reserve accounts as sources to replenish FedNow reserve accounts.

The Federal Reserve has indicated that it may allow existing reserve accounts that currently must be maintained by FIs to be used as sources of funds to automatically maintain the FedNow minimum reserves. If approved, this arrangement could help smaller institutions cover the funds needed for after hours FedNow processing.

Additionally, relaxing the current RTGS requirements for those institutions deemed “well operated” could also provide relief for smaller FIs. As previously mentioned, the Federal Reserve has confirmed that all FedNow settlement operations will be based on individual transaction settlement, which requires FIs to always have the reserves to support each individual transaction.

But the Federal Reserve already allows those FIs with good operating track records to incur “daylight overdrafts.” These overdrafts occur when a bank or credit union is allowed to withdraw more money than it has in its Federal Reserve account to make a payment with the requirement that the overdraft be corrected by the end of a processing day.

With RTGS adopted as the standard for FedNow, offering a “nighttime overdraft” would ease the reserve burden on smaller FIs by allowing their FedNow reserves to temporarily drop below the minimum required levels. For this to occur, however, minimum reserve levels would have to be reset within a specified period of time.

Due to the costs and complexity, many smaller banks and credit unions will be unable—or uninterested—in providing their own additional after hours staff for maintaining 24x7x365 operations. If the Federal Reserve still wants to attract these institutions, a key question becomes who will provide the needed support?

If the Federal Reserve ends up only allowing FedNow processing to be outsourced to correspondent FIs, then the situation becomes very similar to RTP affiliation. That is, smaller FIs will be forced to outsource at least partial operational responsibility to their larger competitors—something that FedNow has otherwise alleviated.

FIs of all sizes outsource various types of processing to outside companies that are non-banks. Fiserv, Vantiv, Jack Henry, and FIS, to name a few, perform several different types of payment processing services for FIs of all sizes. These organizations are not FIs and, consequently, are also not direct competitors.

In turn, it is not hard to surmise these, and similar organizations, will most likely offer after-hours FedNow processing services if the Federal Reserve allows it. This will certainly be a Federal Reserve consideration when drafting final FedNow rules and regulations.

A Question of Value

As mentioned, there is some debate on whether smaller FIs actually need the real-time payments capability that will be offered by the FedNow network. The short answer is some will and some will not. Frankly, many community banks and credit unions are not seeing much demand for real-time payments from their account holders. However, a truly national banking system should provide the same service opportunities to FIs of all sizes competing in comparable market segments.

While the RTP network can provide similar services to those proposed for FedNow, RTP is not generally perceived as a neutral network operator. Many smaller FIs have serious concerns about whether it will treat all its clients impartially.

Real-time payments networks are becoming increasingly available throughout the world. The United States is virtually alone in not having a national fast-payments network operated or directly supervised by its national banking authority. FedNow addresses this imbalance.

This is perhaps the greatest value of FedNow to smaller FIs; namely, it will be a neutral, trusted provider of real-time funds transfer services to all financial institutions, regardless of size. Because of this, many smaller FIs will see the network as an opportunity to better compete with their larger rivals in the world of faster-payment service offerings.

However, for smaller FIs, making the jump to implement these services may not be an easy process. Rather than adopting real-time payments processing for its own sake, community banks and credit unions must look to their own specific situations—their strategic business plans, pain points and accountholder needs before making a decision.

Only by understanding the true costs and impacts of issues like 24x7x365 operations and increased administrative complexity can they best choose the right path for their institutions.

—Jack Baldwin is chairman of BHMI, Omaha, Neb.

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