Aite Group released a study that said that payment card fraud, also know as merchant services fraud costs the economy $8.6 billion dollars per year – that’s $8,600,000,000 dollars. When you accept electronic payments from your clients you are opening yourself up to merchant services fraud.
Here are some things you can do to keep yourself projected:
- If you are accepting payments via the Internet, or over the phone, or through mail get setup with Fraud Trak2 from PlugnPay.
- If you are accepting payments in person, do AVS, address verification for all merchant services transactions. All that you have to do is get the zip code of the person at the point of check out. This has been proven to substantially reduce your cost of credit card processing transitions by moving you from a mid or non-qualified rate to a lower cost qualified rate. It has also been proven to substantially lower your risk of accepting a fraudulent merchant services payment. This means that your chance of charge back is much lower and your overall company profits will be better.
- No matter what, make sure that you are using PCI/PED complaint merchant equipment
If you do all of the above – you will be doing what you need to do to protect yourself and your business from payment processing fraud.
