7 Practices to Protect Your

Business

7 Practices to Protect Your

Business When Accepting Online PaymentsWhen Accepting Online Payments

About the sides

• Most online business owners know that credit card payments are not a guaranteed form of payment but a consumer convenience instead. The rules and regulations involved with online credit card processing were written in favor of the credit card holder. So as a small business owner, you need to be diligent about protecting your business from fraudulent activities and unjustifiable disputes. The following 7 practices can help where this is concerned.

1. Ask for an electronic signature

• Verify that the customer has read and agreed to the terms of their purchase and your return policy. They can do this by simply typing their initials into an area provided for this purpose. Even if you have a “No refunds / All Sales Final” (i.e., a limited refund) policy, the customer still expects your products or services to work. If not, you may still be facing what is called a “not as described” chargeback.

2. Check the Merchant Category Code (MCC)

• each product that you have sold matches the product that the customer receives.

3. Ensure the consumer has the

card in there possession

• Do this by by asking for the three or four-digit CVV2 (credit card security code) on the back of their credit card. Transactions without this code attached to them are 5 times riskier than those that have it listed.

4. Have customers sign for delivered

items.• You should be suspicious of any customer that wants the products

shipped to another location that does not match the billing address they gave you at the time of purchase.

5. Verify the Billing Address.

• You can implement an address verification service (AVS). This will help to eliminate errors in shipping.

6. Your customer’s billing statement needs to match

your doing business-as or DBA

name exactly• This limits any confusion that may occur as well as the number of

disputes that you encounter. Be sure that your business phone number is also displayed on the document.

7. Be suspicious of customers who

want to use multiple credit

cards• Especially if each one has the same first 4 to 6 digits. This could mean

that the same bank issued all of those credit cards. Common sense should tell you that using multiple credit cards is not an issue for concern – provided those credit cards have been issued by different banks.

Learn more

• http://www.nationalprocessing.com

• http://www.nationalprocessing.com/blog