Card Payments

Consumers and businesses have been able to make/receive payments by Card for many years. For merchants this used a simple, if expensive, solution in asking their Bank for an Account to accept Visa and MasterCard's, and consider accepting a limited selection of card types such as AmEx and Diners. The market has changed substantively in recent years with a prolifery on new Fintech players now offering merchant accounts to all sizes of business. Many new payment types have become available as part of the service enablement. Visa and MasterCard themselves are extending their payment types facilitation into cross border payments / direct to card credits, whilst adding complexity to their charging in reflecting individual process costs for regional and international card acceptance, differentials for levels of security and card present and ecommerce initiated transactions.

Why is this important to businesses and corporates?
It is as important as ever that a business looks to accept Card payments. Whilst competition continues to grow in terms of the pay types available , card transactions are fundamental throughout Europe and especially the UK. Obtaining a merchant account is so much easier these days with many options available. Businesses need to think about the type of payments they need to accept (card present, ecommerce, recurring etc) as well as keep track of the continual development in the Cards and Acquirer market to ensure they have the right type of account at the right price.

Questions a business need to consider include:

• Is the right partner being used for the businesses needs in terms of costs, settlement release, payment types, service response?
• Are adequate fraud control measures in place, especially for goods/ service being despatched immediately?
• Adequate internal procedures for dealing with “friendly chargebacks”
• Do they know the costs being incurred in paying/ receiving in other currencies on Cards?
• For businesses using the recurring cards services available, are the right processes in place to protect chargebacks?