{"id":29,"date":"2005-08-24T07:06:56","date_gmt":"2005-08-24T14:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merchantaccountblog.com\/?p=29"},"modified":"2005-08-24T07:08:51","modified_gmt":"2005-08-24T14:08:51","slug":"credit-card-processing-no-nos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merchantequip.com\/merchant-account-blog\/29\/credit-card-processing-no-nos","title":{"rendered":"Credit Card Processing No No’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

This weekend, I was shopping at a business here in Austin, TX and I noticed that the there was a minimum purchase to be able to pay with a credit card. I politely informed the business owner that this was a prohibited practice and I was rudely returned with a “if they’re going to charge me for taking a credit card, then I’m going to chose the ones and how I am going to take them”. <\/p>\n

While this may not seem unusual to some, it is clearly against Visa and MasterCard regulations. Many businesses may not know that this is illegal, and others may just not care. Either way this post is a review of a few common practices that some merchants partake in, and they shouldn’t.<\/p>\n

Pass The Buck \/ Service Charge:<\/strong>
\nThis is charging a service or convenience charge for using a credit card.<\/p>\n

Not Enough:<\/strong>
\nThis is requiring a minimum purchase to be able to pay with a credit card.<\/p>\n

\"Card<\/p>\n

It is very clearly written in Visa and MasterCard policies that these are unacceptable practices. If someone who wants to take the time to report a business does, the businesses can be shut down, and they may be placed on a Terminated Merchant File. This would prohibit them from processing with any processing bank in the US. They could go to an offshore bank with a processing rate of 5 – 10%, and a $1.00 or more transaction fee. To me its not worth the risk financially, and I consider it a bad business practice to impose fees or minimums to accept credit cards. If you’re going to take credit cards, you need to follow the rules that you agreed to when you signed up.<\/p>\n

My other advice is if you do chose not to follow them, don’t be rude to someone who asks about it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This weekend, I was shopping at a business here in Austin, TX and I noticed that the there was a minimum purchase to be able to pay with a credit card. I politely informed the business owner that this was a prohibited practice and I was rudely returned with a “if they’re going to charge […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-merchantaccounts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merchantequip.com\/merchant-account-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merchantequip.com\/merchant-account-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merchantequip.com\/merchant-account-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merchantequip.com\/merchant-account-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merchantequip.com\/merchant-account-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merchantequip.com\/merchant-account-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merchantequip.com\/merchant-account-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merchantequip.com\/merchant-account-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merchantequip.com\/merchant-account-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}