September 23rd, 2008 by Jamie Estep
Manual imprinting just about gone
Filed in: Merchant Accounts | 3 comments
A while back, I blogged about Visa’s unembossed card program.
These cards which can be printer at a bank, do not have the raised lettering that credit cards currently have. These cards are much easier to produce and can be done on standard equipment, but it prevents businesses from obtaining an imprint of a credit card either as a backup method or for smaller merchants who still exclusively use an imprinter.
Visa is now pushing their unembossed card program to US markets, starting with debit cards, and consumer credit cards. This allows issuers to create cards on-the-fly which is great for issuing debit cards to new bank members, or immediately issuing a credit card upon approval. Unfortunately, this convenience comes directly at the expense of fraud prevention and processing redundancy (albeit primitive), and effectively destroys many small mobile merchant’s primary processing method.
My recommendation to mobile merchants out there, is that if your only method of processing is a manual imprinter, start looking for a wireless terminal, or start looking for a portable photo copy machine. It’s just a matter of time before these cards are the only cards!
This is not a comment on this post. It is a request for information on best practices for handling declined credit cards for recurring transactins.
My business lives on $19.95 monthly recurring transactions.
The bain of my existance are credit card declines. We have no automated way of updating credit cards that have been updated. Any hints for me?
With a good virtual terminal setup, you should be able to run reports listing all customers in your recurring billing program.
That would allow you to contact those whose cards are about to expire and have them update their info.
Hope that helps.
Here’s another credit card processing suggestion if you use a manual imprinter and you come across a unembossed card. Write the information down on the receipt and have the customer sign it. Even though you’re not getting an imprint of the card you’re still obtaining a signature.