Industry News

On December 13, 2013, after years of litigation, the court system approved a Class Settlement among merchants, Visa, MasterCard and other Defendants in a class-action lawsuit. Visa, MasterCard and some large banks have agreed to pay nearly $7 billion to an estimated 8 million merchants who have accepted any Visa- and/or MasterCard-Branded cards in the […]

MasterCard, Visa, American Express and Discover have all announced their plans to move forward with EMV-based payments and acceptance.  In fact, most Americans who have received a new card in 2014 should have both EMV and magnetic swipe capabilities.  The conversion is currently happening but will take a few years for many merchants to fully […]

There are two different forms of debit cards: Signature Debit (offline) and PIN Debit (online). Debit cards are linked to the customer’s bank account and generally hold both capabilities of being signature and PIN based. Whether you choose “credit” or “debit” at the POS will determine whether it is an online or offline transaction. Signature […]

Most merchants that accept American Express today have separate statements, settlements, contracts, and acceptance fees from their primary processor. American Express has also historically charged a higher transaction fee to their merchants than Visa or MasterCard.  For these reasons, many merchants have opted to not accept American Express at all at their business, losing out […]

What is interchange? While more and more merchants are becoming familiar with the term “interchange”, some still find it confusing or convoluted when looking at their monthly statements. In the most basic form, interchange stands for the costs of processing and supporting the use of credit cards. Bank card issuers charge merchants this interchange fee […]