How To Prevent Your 3rd Party Merchant Account From Suspension
What would you do if you were sent an email from your online credit card processor telling you that your account has been suspended or frozen?
How are you going to pay the bills in the meantime?
It is extremely important for you to familiarize yourself with the terms of your contract with your credit card processor.
As long as you comply with their set regulation and guidelines to maintain your account in good standing you should have no problems. However, if for some reason you were faced with your account being suspended you need to know: what to do
when to do it
and what is the reason for your account being suspended in the first placeFactors Leading To Account Suspension! Persistent pattern of chargebacks.
Poor or inadequate response to customers and a history of unresolved complaints or refused refunds
Supplying faulty or inferior goods, not as described in your product description
Entering customer credit cards yourself which goes against your merchant agreementTo protect yourself from unnecessary problems and disruption of your daily business you should use another third party credit card provider while you are making enquiries to restore your account.
Make regular transfers of your earnings to your bank account and keep up to date records of all transactions. 10 Point Checklist To Prevent Fraudulent Orders 1. Do not use the same bank account to receive your earnings and for your daily essentials such as expenses, bills, shopping, etc. Use a separate bank account to deposit funds from sales and make regular transfers into a separate bank account. 2. Provide full contact details so that customers can contact you direct. Also make sure you return their messages in good time to avoid unnecessary delays and aggravation. 3. Make a clear statement in your terms and order page that customers should use their primary email address and not free email accounts. A high proportion of free throw away email accounts are regularly used to commit fraud. 4. Only allow orders to be shipped to the same address as the billing address registered to the customers credit card. Many cases of fraud use alternative addresses to get hold of goods without the original credit card holders knowledge. 5. Exclude delivery to known high risk countries. You can get this information from your credit card company. Use a pull down menu with a full list of countries eligible for delivery of your goods. 6. Consider setting a minimum spend value to help discourage fraudulent attempts to place orders for small sums repeatedly in the hope of getting goods with stolen cards. 7. Review orders manually to check if repeated orders have been made using the same credit card number. 8. Don't put all your eggs into one basket!
Use a minimum of two or more 3rd party companies for orders so that you will always have at least one ongoing payment system to continue to receive and process orders. 9. Refuse shipments to P.O. Boxes. Request the full mailing address before shipping any order. 10. Put a hold on unusually high orders until further verification can be made such as a phone call to the customer. Other areas to consider are to prevent the incidences of chargebacks. What Are Chargebacks? A chargeback is what is when a customer contacts their credit card issuing company directly for a refund of a payment. The credit card issuing company will claim back the full payment on the customer's behalf. For which a fee is charged to your credit card processing company. This cost will also be charged to you and you maybe subject to additional fees according to your provider. This process can become a very costly affair if you as a merchant are subject to excessively high incidences of chargebacks. In severe circumstances too many chargebacks can cost you your merchant account. In this case your account will be frozen and inactive pending further investigation into all billing disputes. In the case of fraud where a customers details were compromised you cannot be 100% sure of when or how this may happen until some time after the transaction. By that time you would have already shipped the product to the customer. In these cases you could stand to loose on the initial processing fees as well as the time and cost to ship the goods. Top Tips Conduct regular checks on your list of orders at regular intervals and mange your bank account and customer enquiries to the best of your abilities as a reputable merchant. Your continuing good standing as a reputable and trustworthy merchant will help your business as long as you maintain your daily business tasks to the highest standards and afford your customers the highest levels of customer support. Maintain good bookkeeping of all orders so that you can track orders to verify the dates when an order was placed and any email contacts made to a customer for any disputes received. This could help in cases where a customer has forgotten placing an order, or does not recognize the billing company name on their statements. You should also make it very clear on your order page and confirmation page as to the billing name that will appear on customer statements to prevent any confusion. Nancy P Redford shows you how to Take Online Payments for any web site without a costly merchant account. Stay safe on the Internet by getting wise to Online Scams
and Shams. Plus get some of the best business tools and resources for your home-based business here at: http://www.miriadz.com
Related News
|
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Make That 3 Billion
My previous article I wrote called "One Point Two Billion"
attracted quite some attention, the downloads through all
the article syndication services has been astronomical
compared to any other articles I wrote which are still with
them.
It seems the numbers game is popular not only with the
accountancy profession, but with just about anyone running
a website who is interested in more sales from anywhere in
the world.
The internet has proved to be the great leveller, even a
grandmother I know has made hundreds of thousands of dollars
just from publishing a couple of e-books, business of that
magnitude is not now confined to those people with large
sums of investment capital, teams of accountants, planners,
secretaries, swanky offices etc. Anyone, even you, can make
money regularly on the internet, just aim for a goal and
'go for it!'
The costs of setting up have never been lower, the ease of
making web pages has never been easier, ( I make my web
pages in Notepad, which is on every Windows computer), and
the potential audience for your web pages has never been
larger. So what are you waiting for?
The sheer mountain of information available through e-books
on any subject and especially on setting up a business on
the internet would take you a lifetime to read through, so
just be selective and read only what you need to know about
and get started in that business. Businesspeople who have
'been there-done that', have written up an enormous amount
of e-books to pass on their knowledge and experience,
pitfalls to avoid, how to spend your advertising dollars,
and just about everything else you need to know about to
ensure success. So profit from their experience, avoid the
pitfalls, do what they say you should do, and you should be
in a profitable business in no time, just the way they did it.
No large sums of investment are needed, just time and
dedication.
If you provide an excellent service that benefits all your
clients, they will recommend you to their friends,if on the
other hand you want to be a 'scammer' and a 'fly by night'
operator determined to 'rip-off' as many people as possible,
you will come to grief. You will find your web hosting
account rapidly terminated, your e-mail account likewise, and
your name plastered all over the forums and newsgroups.
You get out of life exactly what you put in.
There are still mysteries about life we still don't understand
and this is the reason we come to grief, but on the other hand,
if you work for the benefit of others, this 'mystery of life',
for want of a better name,cuts in and helps us along, we go
with the flow and good things start to happen.
I could tell you of many experiences I have had, both good and
bad, which I have learnt a great deal from, but space precludes
that, maybe one day.
All right, you win, I will tell you of one particular incident
more recently and then move on with this article.
I carried a St.Christopher medallion on a gold chain in my wallet
for six years, given to me by the wife of a good friend overseas,
'it will keep you safe' she said. I received a new wallet for a
Christmas present and changed everything in the old wallet into the
new one, except the St. Christopher medallion, it was looking a
bit 'worse for wear' and I decided to put it in the cupboard.
That day I lost my mobile phone!
For two whole days I felt a loss which can only be described as
a 'bereavement'. I had lost touch with the network I was attached
to night and day, seven days a week, I felt bereft. I did not know
if someone was trying to ring me, whether something was urgent I
had to know about, my sense of loss was total.
Was this to do with the St. Christopher medallion? I thought surely not.
That was on the Tuesday, by Thursday morning I had decided to put
that 'good luck' St. Christopher medallion into my new wallet.
My mobile phone turned up via a 'good samaritan' who would take no
money as a reward whatsoever.I was never more pleased to see my mobile phone.
So what happened here?Was it something to do with the St. Christopher medallion? Was it because I had 'bad thoughts' that it was the 'worse for wear'so discard it as inconsequential? I don't know the answer.
There have been too many such incidents in my life it would take
volumes to relate the details.
We don't know these 'mysteries of life' but one thing is important
-keep a positive outlook to everything and everyone and good things will happen for you.
It's difficult to visualize how many people that are out there who can
log on to your website. It's also difficult to understand what kinds
of people they are, what background and education they have had. Why
they are logging on to your new site. What do they expect to see, or
learn, or buy?
How will they benefit from visiting your site?.
Will they buy a good product, or learn something, or get some amusement
or entertainment from it?.
Choosing on Order Fulfillment Service
When your eCommerce business grows to the point where you can no longer package and ship the orders yourself, it's time to begin outsourcing your order fulfillment. Although all order fulfillment centers offer the same basic services, their individual methods and costs will help you choose one over the other. When selecting an order fulfillment service, keep the following in mind:
The Lowdown On ECommerce: Making All The Pieces Fit Together
The Lowdown on Ecommerce
Selling From Your Website
Greetings!
How To Start An Internet Business ? Content, Content, Content
When it comes to e-commerce, the time-tested clich is, "Content is king." In this case, the clich is correct.
E-commerce: Is It Right for You?
The birth of the Internet and the mass availability of personal Computers in the late 80's changed peoples life forever, Everyone now has had the potential to be their own boss whether you are mother at home looking after your children or a manual laborer there are opportunities in abundance . Just a search on Google for business opportunities will bring up more offers than your parents would have had in their whole life. So it must be easy to make a living from the internet right? No it's not, you need a firm business plan and you need to work hard at it.
Stakeholder Analysis and Stakeholder Management
What is a Stakeholder?
Online Credit Card Processing - How to Accept Credit Cards - Ecommerce 101
Back in 1998 (through 2000 or so), I worked for a small company (called PaymentNet / then Signio) that handled online transactions. Verisign later purchased this company, and the product team I led integrated the "client" - the portion that took the credit card information and sent it to our servers for processing. The product name is Payflow Pro - maybe you've heard of it?
One Point Two Billion
In this surreal world of the internet, anyone, even you, can
put your point across to a staggering number of people in
every country on the planet.
Increasing E-commerce Website Sales
With consumers purchasing billions of dollars of merchandise online each and every year, the Internet has become the key to financial security. The e-commerce business has consistently thrived well above all other online enterprises, and continues to flourish. Because of this encouraging surge in activity, many individuals are now interested in becoming e-commerce merchants. To profit from your online business, you must first produce a unique website that will intrigue visitors and interest them in your items.
The Rise of Multinational Virtual Corporations
The virtual corporation is the emerging organisational form, which best combines, a fluid ability to adapt to rapidly changing markets and is able to leverage its skills with the complementary skills of other corporations.
In the concept's purest form, each company that links up with others to create a virtual corporation will be stripped to its essence. It will contribute only what it regards as its core competencies. It will mix and match what it does best with the best of other companies and entrepreneurs
How To Sell Your Products Online?
E-commerce is gaining pace! Research firm eMarketer predicts that
2003 will see online sales reaching US $58.2 billion excluding
travel. According to Forrester Research, another reputable research
company, business to consumer e-commerce will hit US $230 billion
by the year 2008. While offline retail sales are staggering and
will continue to do so in near term, online retail sales will
show a hefty 19 percent consecutive year over year growth! And
by the same year, two third of all US households will buy some
kind of products and services online. In 2003 alone 97 million
consumers will make some kind of purchases through the Internet.
Leading eCommerce Consultant Admits You Should Only Listen to One Real Expert! (And its not him!)
Let me share with you a secret that most marketing experts and consultants don't want you to know? (many of them don't even understand this secret themselves.)
Do Your Online Brokerage Business With Zero Down
If you have little or no capital but you want to do big international business; if your small business is not doing so well; or your capital is low, why don't you turn to the Internet? The Internet is the fastest and most efficient method for the newcomer and the struggling businessperson to become an international broker of goods and services.
Top Ten Qualities to Look for in an Online Pharmacy
As you may have noted, there are thousands or even hundreds of thousands of websites selling pharmaceutical products or drugs. These are called ONLINE PHARMACIES or PHARMACIES ONLINE.
7 Must Have Scripts to Look for When Shopping for E-commerce Hosting
When shopping for e-commerce hosting there are a lot of things you need to keep and mind. When you know what to look for it is a lot easier to ensure you get exactly what you need and not leave any important information out. Consider these 7 must haves before you start shopping for e-commerce hosting so you will be prepared.
How to Start a Business on the Internet
So you want to start a business? Good for you. Really, I mean that sincerely. I think about the millions of people that let the thought pass briefly through their minds on he way to work everyday.
Google to Compete with PayPal?
PayPal is secure in its domination over the electronic payment industry, at least for now.
Creating The Perfect Ecommerce Website
If you're thinking of jumping on the bandwagon and going into business with your own ecommerce website, you'd do well to look at a few examples before you start. Finding out what a good ecommerce website looks like will help you know what to include - and what to avoid - when you start to set up one of your own. Here are some of the things you'll find on the perfect ecommerce web site:
Content Ever be Profitable?
THE CURRENT WORRIES
|