Understanding Credit Card Fees

Monday, January 4, 2016

The credit card processing industry has a very confusing set of rates & fees.  It is our goal to help our merchants understand what fees are legitimate and what fees are superfluous.  This article will address 2 legitimate fees and also offer some Best Practices. 

Visa Misuse of Authorization

$0.045 per

The Visa Misuse of Authorization Fee will be assessed to approved and partially-approved electronic authorizations that cannot be matched to a settled transaction within the following time frame: Travel and Entertainment (T&E) merchants = 20 days; all others = 10 days. If an authorization was attempted and received but the transaction was not settled, you must electronically reverse the authorization within 24 hours for all card present transactions and 72 hours for all card not present transactions

AKA - Approval authorization is obtained, no matching settled transaction or authorization reversal

 

 Visa Zero Floor Limit

$0.10 per

The fee will be assessed on settled transactions that cannot be matched to previously approved or partially-approved electronic authorizations

AKA - The authorization code used for a transaction cannot be matched to an approved authorization

 

Visa 'Best Practice' Recommendations

  • Utilize the account verification message (instead of an authorization request) when consumer account information requires verification.
  • Ensure that transactions that will not be cleared are properly reversed
  • Only retrieve voice authorization #'s from the authorized number provided by your processor

If you see these fees on your TMC Statement- please feel free to call in to make sure that you are handling the transactions properly.  We want to make sure that you are aware of every fee and able to minimize the fees you have to pay- if at all possible! 
Thank you for choosing Total Merchant Concepts. 

Cheri Perry 1/4/2016