US Mobile Payments FAQs

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of security standards designed to ensure that ALL companies that accept, process, store or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment. The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) was launched on September 7, 2006 to manage the ongoing evolution of the Payment Card Industry (PCI) security standards with a focus on improving payment account security throughout the transaction process. The PCI DSS is administered and managed by the PCI SSC, an independent body that was created by the major payment card brands (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover and JCB.). It is important to note that the payment brands and acquirers are responsible for enforcing compliance, not the PCI council.

Interchange qualification requirements, as defined by the Credit Card Association, affect the fee or surcharges. Merchant will pay higher discount rate for transactions that do not meet the best qualification criteria. Please visit Visa & MasterCard websites for more information https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/visa-usa-interchange-reimbursement-fees.pdf https://www.mastercard.us/en-us/business/overview/support/merchant-interchange-rates.html

Level 2 & Level 3 data processing saves businesses money on processing costs, these are B2B payments with commercial and purchasing cards. Unlike a standalone credit card terminal, a virtual terminal can be used to enter additional level 2 data (purchase order, customer code, tax) and level 3 data (item description, product code, quantity, unit of measure). These transactions can qualify for lower Interchange rates and reduce processing cost due to lower risk of fraud and chargebacks with Business to Business or Business to Government situations.

An authorization obtained for a suspicious transaction with additional verification steps.

A fraud reduction service that allows a merchant to verify cardholders billing address for card not present transactions.

Always call your authorization center when you receive a “Call Center” message in response to an authorization request. Do not complete any transaction if the authorization request was declined. Obtain full match AVS response for key-entered transactions. Communicate merchant returns, refund, and cancellation policies to the cardholder at the time of the transaction. Get the cardholder’s signature at point of sale. Ship product(s) before depositing the transaction.