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How to Setup Authorize.Net With Your BigCommerce Store

Authorize.Net With Your BigCommerce Store

BigCommerce is one of the top eCommerce platforms currently available and is the #1 enterprise cloud solution for companies doing $1 million or more annually. Based on that success it’s no surprise that BigCommerce is specifically designed to make it as easy as possible to integrate leading payment gateways, including Authorize.Net.

PayPal Powered by Braintree is BigCommerce’s default gateway, so to use Authorize.Net you’ll have to manually change over. Don’t worry, it’s extremely easy. Follow the three simple steps listed below to launch BigCommerce’s setup function and enable your store to accept credit card payments via Authorize.Net. 


Step One: In your BigCommerce dashboard go to the “store setup” tab in the left sidebar, and then select “payments.”

The payments page will provide access to the settings for all payment types, including the default gateway, offline (in-store) payment methods, additional online methods, and digital wallets. 

Step Two: Click the “Online Payment Methods” tab. 

Selecting this tab will open a dropdown list with a full alphabetical list of all the payment gateways and online processors that BigCommerce integrates with, including Authorize.Net.

Step Three: Find the Authorize.Net line and click the “Set Up” button on the far-right. 

This will open the Authorize.Net settings page. Clicking “get started now” begins the setup process. BigCommerce will supply a set of simple instructions guiding you through the process, and you will be prompted to enter the relevant information to connect your Authorize.Net account. 

Setting up Authorize.Net payments with your BigCommerce store will require the following pieces of information:

Display Name: The display name determines how the payment method will appear at checkout. You can leave it as “Authorize.Net,” but to provide clarity to your customers, it’s recommended to set it to something like “credit/debit.”

Merchant ID: This is the identifier for your merchant account. This will either have been assigned by Authorize.Net or, for businesses with their own outside merchant accounts that have been set up to integrate with Authorize.Net, this ID will be assigned by the merchant account provider. 

Username/Password: Your Authorize.Net login will be required to maintain an active connection. Incorrect login details will cause transactions to fail upon attempted payment. 

Transaction Key: In the case of errors on checkout, it may be necessary to generate a new transaction key. That can be done through Authorize.Net’s merchant portal. Full instructions are available via BigCommerce support here: https://support.bigcommerce.com/s/article/Checkout-Errors#authorize

 

Once your account is set up, you can change or manage your settings at any time through the same Authorize.Net panel, and, assuming correct login information has been entered, you can also launch the Authorize.Net merchant portal from directly within BigCommerce. 

If you don’t yet have a merchant account and are in search of the right electronic payments solution for your company, contact BAMS today and speak to one of our experts about how we can use our industry-leading experience to help you get set up with the best payment solution at the lowest possible cost. 

 

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Top Retail POS of 2019

POS merchant account services system

Providing shoppers with a smooth POS, easy checkout experience is key to generating return business and a loyal customer base. There are few things that can frustrate a customer more than waiting in a long line once they’ve made their buying decision or running into trouble with systems at the cash.

That’s why it’s so important for merchants to offer their customers reliable electronic payment solutions, and that starts with a good point-of-sale system. BAMS integrates with 12 of the leading retail POS systems so
that our partners can ensure they’re offering their customers the best checkout and payment experience possible.

Lightspeed
Lightspeed is a mobile POS that can be loaded and accessed on any mobile device. It’s a powerful point-of-sale system that provides retailers with flexible payment options and a suite of useful tools to manage their inventory and business processes. Lightspeed integrates with the Verifone MX915 payment terminal which is EMV-compliant and accepts swipe cards, chip cards, and contactless payments.

Lightspeed also offers retailers advanced inventory management capabilities including the ability to streamline their ordering through centralized catalogs, track time on-shelf, inventory costs, stock levels, and more.

Retail Pro
Retail Pro is a point-of-sale system offering the flexibility of both fixed-desktop and mobile setups to accommodate the needs of all retailers, regardless of their store size or layout. Retail Pro offers POS systems for small businesses, chain stores, and enterprise-level users so that retailers can get the service they need to fit their volume rather than being forced into a one-size-fits-all solution.

Retail Pro’s intuitive and user-friendly interface is one of its biggest selling points, but retailers that choose it should be aware that Retail Pro does not offer card processing hardware and a third-party card reader will be required.

NCR Silver
NCR Silver is a point-of-sale system targeted to small and medium-sized businesses. Their cloud-based mobile POS runs on iOS 8 and 9 and their own hardware solution, the NCR Silver Quantum. They offer full POS solutions tailored to single-location, multi-location, and franchised retailers, as well as ala carte hardware like card swipers, EMV readers, receipt printers, cash drawers, and more.

NCR Silver boasts easy set-up, a simple interface, and lightning-fast training, making it an ideal solution for small businesses looking to gain electronic payment capabilities without taking on the challenges that come along with complex hardware or software projects.

Clover
Clover is an Android-based mobile POS that runs on attractive proprietary hardware systems designed to maximize both function and form. Their Clover Mini provides a small, highly portable tablet-based POS solution that can be easily utilized from a front counter or moved around a store as needed. The
Clover Station provides a more traditional front-counter setup with a rotating tablet, cash drawer, and a receipt printer with customer-facing screen and integrated contactless payment. The POS software is designed for ease-of-use and streamlines inventory management, discounts and
promotions, reporting, employee management, and much more. The software also offers $100,000 in liability protection against data breaches to provide merchants with additional piece of mind.

In addition to Lightspeed, Retail Pro, NCR Silver, and Clover, BAMS also integrates with eight additional retail point-of-sale systems – ShopKeep, Shift4, Quickbooks, iConnect, Cayan, Braintree, ACE, and USAePay.

Contact us today to find out how easy it is to integrate BAMS’ industry-leading electronic payment solutions with any of these popular POS options.

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When is a Third-Party Processor like PayPal, Square, or Stripe Right for You?

PayPal, Square, or Stripe

The electronic payments industry is a hotly contested marketplace, with a wide array of different payment solutions for merchants to choose from. Unfortunately, sometimes that level of choice can lead to indecision. It isn’t uncommon for merchants to respond by signing up for the providers that they’re most familiar with. Sometimes that might mean going directly to their bank. Often it means choosing one of the brand names they’ve seen or read about, with PayPal, Square, and Stripe being three of the most well-publicized. 

Each of those companies provides excellent electronic payment solutions, but it’s important to note that they’re best suited to a very specific kind of business. Companies that jump on board with them based on brand name alone without considering their needs might find themselves limited, or worse yet, bleeding-off profits needlessly. 

 

What Service do PayPal, Square, and Stripe Offer?

PayPal, Square, and Stripe all represent third-party payment processors – companies that offer electronic payment processing without the need to sign up for a merchant account. Traditionally, merchants looking to accept credit card payments would have to sign up for a special merchant account through a bank. With third-party providers, a merchant’s transactions are pooled with all of the transactions from the provider’s other users and processed through the provider’s master merchant account.

That set-up removes many of the headaches that can come along with merchant account approval – especially for smaller, low-volume businesses. But, like all middlemen, third-party providers make their money by taking a piece of the action, either monthly, or on each transaction. Whether or not they’re a cost-effective solution depends entirely on how their fee structures suit a given business. 

 

What Types of Business Do These Third-Party Processors Suit Best?

PayPal

PayPal charges merchants 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction. There is no monthly fee, and by using PayPal’s card reader, merchants can lower their fee to a straight 2.7% for swiped transactions. That fee structure, and specifically the lack of a monthly charge, makes PayPal most suitable for merchants with low monthly sales volumes. Businesses who sell in large volumes or bring in significant revenues will likely find that the lower cut they’d pay with a more traditional merchant account would more than make up for paying a monthly account fee. 

Square

Square offers a varied fee table depending on the product being used. Their flagship Square Reader charges 2.75% on every transaction. Their terminal and register charge 2.6% plus $0.10 per transaction and 2.5% plus $0.10 per transaction respectively.  That makes Square suitable for the same types of businesses as PayPal, and the Square Reader’s zero-flat fee per transaction makes it particularly attractive for merchants selling low-ticket items where losing $0.10 or $0.30 on top of their percentage fee would be a big deal. 

Stripe

Stripe offers a single rate of 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction. That straightforward structure definitely makes the fees easy to understand, but it’s still an expensive option compared with traditional merchant accounts which can often boast per-transaction fees of as low as 1%. That puts Stripe in the same category as PayPal and Square with one major caveat – Stripe’s hardware solution, Stripe Terminal, is currently only a Beta program offered in the U.S. only. That means most merchants in the U.S., and all international ones, won’t have access to it, making Stripe impractical for most brick and mortar businesses. 

 

Third-party payment processing, while more expensive on a per-transaction basis than traditional merchant accounts, offers a cost-effective and, most importantly, simple solution for merchants that do low monthly sales. But the numbers make clear that for businesses doing higher volumes or dollar amounts, the fees associated with companies like PayPal, Square, and Stripe can quickly become unfeasible. For those businesses, a traditional merchant account is normally a much more sensible option.

At BAMS, we’re here to help you get set-up with the right merchant account for your business. Contact us today for a quote or to find out how we can use our experience as the industry leader in electronic payment solutions to help streamline your payments and save you money on fees.

 

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Top Mobile Restaurant POS Systems of 2019

Restaurant POS System

A point-of-sale system is an important factor in a restaurant’s success for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, it’s the system that facilitates all electronic payments, and in a world where plastic is king, a flawlessly operating POS is a must.

On top of that, paying the bill is often the last step of a customers’ dining experience, and any hiccups could be the difference between a great review and a customer walking away with a bad taste in their mouth (no pun intended).

It’s clear why no restaurant can afford to do without an effective, reliable POS. Luckily, BAMS integrates with 24 of the most popular point-of-sale systems on the market today, including the following four merchant-favorite mobile systems.

 

Lavu

Lavu’s is a highly flexible iPad-based point-of-sale system that has become the leading mobile POS for bars and restaurants. It offers a full suite of mobile payment options, including contactless payments and traditional swipe or chip card payments via integrations with hardware like Square. Lavu also integrates with PayPal’s EMV-compliant chip card reader for merchants processing their payments through PayPal. In addition to their iPad-based POS, the company also offers self-serve kiosks to help streamline the guest ordering experience.

Lavu’s system offers an entire suite of features to aide front and back-of-house staff, including menu customization, automatic tab authorization, pre-selectable happy hour settings, inventory tracking and control, advanced reporting, and much more. The system offers an open API so that restaurants can customize and configure their implementations based on their evolving needs.

 

Lightspeed Restaurant

Lightspeed offers the same tableside ordering and mobile-POS benefits as most of its competitors along with some unique features that make it an attractive solution. One of those features is Lightspeed Accounting, an integration that allows the POS to be synched with a restaurant’s accounting software to automate parts of the bookkeeping process, automatically sync data, and offer advanced reporting to managers.

Lightspeed comes with a no-cost EMV-compliant terminal which, while a bit bulkier than some other options, allows servers to process card payments directly at table-side without having to walk away with a customer’s card.

 

Clover

Clover is a cloud-based mobile POS company that offers point-of-sale systems built on Android. Unlike Lavu and Lightspeed, Clover only offers proprietary hardware, and their system can’t be loaded onto an existing tablet. With that being said, the products Clover offer are innovative, and their line covers a wide-array of customer needs.

The Clover Flex is a small handheld POS with a touchscreen built-in, perfect for tableside ordering and payments. Their Clover Mini is a more traditional mobile POS that offers a wider feature set useful to restaurants including configurable floor plans, tab pre-authorization and more. Both are EVM-compliant and can accept swipe, chip, or contactless payment. At $499 US and $599 US respectively, they’re also very affordable POS systems.

 

ShopKeep

ShopKeep is another iPad based mobile POS popular with bars and restaurants, processing over 289 million transactions per year. Their POS can be integrated with card readers like Square, but ShopKeep also offers a complete hardware kit providing all the components a restaurant needs to accept payments, including an iPad enclosure, cash drawer, EMV-compliant card reader, receipt and kitchen printers, and more.

Their POS software offers fully-featured front and back of house management, advanced analytics, tableside ordering capability, staff management, accounting integration, online ordering, and many more of the features restaurateurs expect from a mobile POS.

In addition to these four popular mobile POS systems, BAMS also integrates with 21 more of the industry’s best mobile and fixed point-of-sale solutions. Whichever system your restaurant chooses, we’re ready to help get you up, running, and accepting electronic payments with the minimum hassle possible. Contact us today to request a quote or find out more about how BAMS can help your restaurant take the headache out of electronic payments.

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Authorize.Net Direct Post Security Upgrade: Updating MD5 to SHA-512

Authorize.Net Direct Post Security Upgrade

Authorize.Net – the most popular payment gateway service provider in the world – is in the process of making a big change to how it verifies transactions, and that change impacts the business of every single one of their Direct Post users.

The company is phasing out MD5-based hashing and switching to SHA-512 signature key hashing. The last stage of the switch goes into effect on June 27th, 2019, and every business using Authorize.Net Direct Post, including BAMS users, will have to switch over before that date to avoid interruptions to their payment processing services.

To a lot of merchants, this might be a confusing topic or seem like an unnecessary hassle, but this change is an important step in keeping Authorize.Net’s transaction security on the cutting edge – something that benefits every single merchant on the platform.

 

What are MD5 and SHA-512?

MD5 and SHA-512 are cryptographic hash functions – algorithms that take data of any size and transmit them into an essentially irreversible fixed-length string. In simpler terms, hash functions take any type of data – like your name or your credit card number – and turn it into a new set of letters and numbers with a fixed number of characters.

Once that new set of letters and numbers has been created, it’s mathematically so difficult to translate it back into the original data that it simply isn’t feasible. That means that users who know the translation between the original data and the hash can easily verify it, but outside parties – like hackers or other bad actors – can’t decrypt the hash to get at the sensitive information it protects.

That level of security is why credit card companies and payment processors use cryptographic hashing to protect transaction data. A buyer’s complete information can be hashed and transmitted without having to worry about it being intercepted and seen by anyone that isn’t supposed to.

 

Why is switching from MD5 to SHA-512 worth the trouble?

Internet security is a never-ending game of cat and mouse. Hackers and bad guys are constantly figuring out new ways to break existing security protocols, and security teams are constantly figuring out new safeguards to replace the old ones.

MD5 is old technology. It was designed in 1991, and while it’s been a security workhorse for decades, it’s so old and so common that it no longer meets the level of security required to protect transaction data. MD5 has a number of weak points, not the least of which are that hackers have developed brute force attacks that can decrypt its hashes, and that it’s possible to duplicate the same hashes with different data.

SHA-512 is one of the newest hash functions in the SHA-2 family, and it has some major security benefits over MD5. The first is that, while MD5 is a 128-bit hash function, SHA-512 creates 512-bit hashes. In practical terms, what that means is that the strings of letters and numbers created by SHA-512 are 2.75x larger than the ones created by MD5 (trust us on the math.) The second major benefit is that SHA-512 is collision resistant, meaning it’s much, much harder to create the same hash from two different sets of data.

The result is that SHA-512 encryption is much harder to crack than MD5, and when it comes to the sensitive payment data of your customers, that advantage is priceless.

 

What do I have to do to make sure my Authorize.Net integration is up to date?

Your two basic options are to upgrade Authorize.Net to version 2.3.1, or to apply a patch to your implementation of version 2.2.8. In either case, you’ll also need to obtain a signature key for your newly updated security.

Patching an existing Authorize.Net integration isn’t overly complex, but it might be beneficial to obtain some developer help to get the job done. 

Completing the necessary steps before June 27th, 2019 will ensure your uninterrupted ability to continue processing payments through Authorize.Net and will ensure your customers will be able to continue doing business with you with full confidence in the security of their sensitive data.

 

Check out our Authorize.net Certified Integrations and learn more about BAMS. Our low-price guarantee and unique five-point price comparison process ensure that partnering with BAMS will not only make your payment processing easier, it’ll also help boost your company’s profitability as well.

 

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What Tools Does BAMS Offer for Offline and Online Merchants?

Online Merchant

BAMS is the industry leader in payment processing, trusted by thousands of merchants across the globe. That success is due to our full suite of features designed to help businesses like yours accept electronic payments with less fuss, and lower fees. BAMS has been designed from the ground up to provide all of the functionality needed by both our online and offline partners, and thanks to that client-focused design, 98% of our users report lower stress when working with BAMS merchant accounts.  Here are just a few of the many features BAMS offers to our clients in both digital and brick-and-mortar sales.

 

BAMS Online Merchant Tools

Payment Gateway and eCommerce Integration

BAMS integrates seamlessly with all of the most popular payment gateways and ecommerce solutions, including Authorize.net, Magneto, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and many more. Partnering with BAMS for your merchant services means you won’t have to worry about making changes to your online store, ensuring maximum uptime and the smoothest possible experience for your customers while you get set up.

Customer Information Management

BAMS’ customer information management tokenizes and securely stores your customers’ payment information, ensuring that their sensitive data will always remain secure, boosting your PCI compliance, and enabling easy management of recurring payments. It also enables customers to store multiple payment methods so that they can easily select the most convenient options for future purchases.

 

BAMS Offline Merchant Tools

Point-of-Sale Integration

BAMS works with virtually any point-of-sale system, from fully integrated multi-terminal systems to standalone pads. That means that regardless of your existing in-store setup, partnering with BAMS will be a hassle-free process. We’ll also help you ensure that your equipment is updated to comply with EMV chip-card requirements in order to protect you from unnecessary liability exposure, and we offer a full range of EMV-compliant terminals ready to easily integrate with your in-store system.

Business Funding

One of our goals at BAMS is to help our clients get the funding they need by offering the most affordable cash advances possible. We accomplish that goal by integrating with Fundomate, the first search engine for business cash advances. BAMS partners can take advantage of our easy online application, enabling the entire process and all document submissions to be handled electronically, saving both time and paperwork. The result is that applying for cash advances through BAMS is faster and easier than ever. It’s also cheaper than ever, since we also don’t charge any of the fees associated with traditional brokers.

 

BAMS also offers a number of features and services that apply to all of our clients regardless of whether they operate online, offline, or both. That includes our powerful chargeback management tools to help minimize losses, and our industry-leading reporting and analytics suite that helps our clients make more informed business decisions. We also help all of our clients become fully PCI compliant, ensuring data security and peace of mind.

Contact us to find out more about the full suite of BAMS features and how your business can put them to work today. Our low-price guarantee and unique five-point price comparison process ensure that partnering with BAMS will not only make your payment processing easier, it’ll also help boost your company’s profitability as well.

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An Introduction To BAMS’ Popular E-Commerce Integrations

Ecommerce

We now live in a digital world, and online shopping has become king. A 2018 study by NPR found that an astounding 75% of Americans have purchased something online, and every year consumers shift more and more of their shopping to the web. As the leader in electronic payments, we at BAMS understand how important it is for our partners to have strong, stable e-commerce platforms, and as a result, we’ve designed BAMS to integrate with all of the most popular payment gateways, online checkout solutions, and fully-featured e-commerce platforms. Here are just a few of the many e-commerce integrations available through BAMS.


Authorize.Net

Authorize.Net is the world’s largest online payment gateway, allowing merchants to accept e-commerce payments with credit cards, ACH eChecks, PayPal, ApplePay, and more. Now owned by Visa, it offers outstanding security and fraud protection and an extensive list of third-party integrations. Authotize.Net also offers streamlined single-click payment options designed to enable transactions like charity donations to be made with a minimal headache for the end-user.

Magento

Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform owned by Adobe that has been used by over 250,000 online stores worldwide. Magento is one of the oldest players in e-commerce solutions, and its availability as a one-click install from a number of major hosting providers has aided its popularity. Like Authorize.Net, there is an enormous list of third-party applications that can be easily integrated with Magento stores to expand their functionality.

CyberSource

CyberSource is another e-commerce payment system owned by Visa, used by 400,000 merchants all over the world. It provides secure online checkout functionality to online stores, enabling them to accept major credit cards, as well as third-party solutions like PayPal. Its Decision Manager product is the world’s largest fraud detection system, processing and analyzing data from over 68 billion transactions annually.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a Texas-based e-commerce company offering online shopping products for websites, blogs, and social media applications like Instagram and Facebook. BigCommerce is highly scalable and offers hundreds of built-in features users can employ right out of the box without having to turn to third-party plugins. That scalability has made BigCommerce the number one eCommerce platform for businesses that bring in $1 million or more in sales each year, and it’s currently used by world-class brands like Toyota, Gibson guitars, and more.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a fully-featured e-commerce plugin specifically designed to operate with the WordPress content management system. Thanks to the widespread use of WordPress, WooCommerce has grown into one of the web’s most popular e-commerce solutions, boasting over 64,000,000 downloads. In addition to e-commerce and shopping cart functionality, WooCommerce offers a full suite of website themes, allowing users to build professional online stores using nothing but the WooCommerce platform and WordPress.

Volusion

Volusion is an all-in-one e-commerce platform that allows users to design fully-functional e-commerce websites from scratch using a suite of built-in tools and modules. It essentially acts as a content management system and e-commerce platform in one, allowing users to build out their online stores page by page, skin them with professionally designed themes, and then populate the shopping areas with all the flexibility and functionality required. In addition to its store and shopping cart features, it also includes built-in marketing tools like search engine optimization and social integration.

 

Our long list of popular e-commerce integrations means that when you partner with us for your merchant account, you’ll be able to seamlessly integrate BAMS with your existing e-commerce solutions without having to worry about the hassle of changing your checkout process, your store setup, or your users’ experience. Contact us today to find out how BAMS can help you save money and streamline your online payment processing right away!

 

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How Your Business Can Protect Itself Against Chargebacks

Chargeback Protection

Chargebacks are an unfortunate reality of accepting credit card payments, but they aren’t something businesses have to lie down and accept without a fight. Some chargebacks are completely legitimate, like cases where a purchase was made fraudulently by a third party. But many chargebacks are fraudulent, frivolous, or abuses of the system. In those cases, there is no reason for a company to accept losing the revenue, the product, and the additional chargeback penalty, and fighting back is in order.

 

Preventing Chargebacks

The first step in chargeback defense is to work proactively to stop them from happening in the first place. While merchants can’t prevent abusive or fraudulent chargeback requests, they can take steps to help minimize legitimate chargebacks.

Make it clear where the credit card charges are coming from:

One of the most common causes of chargeback requests is customers checking their statements and finding unfamiliar purchases. Worried about potential fraud, they then contact their card issuer and attempt to stop the payment. Sometimes this happens due to legitimate fraud, but many times it’s simply a matter of the customer not recognizing the payment descriptor – the name shown alongside the transaction amount. It’s incredibly important that merchants make themselves easy to recognize by using descriptors that match their branding rather than numbered company names or parent corporations.

Ensure customer complaints are taken care of quickly:

Of all the valid reasons major credit card companies accept chargebacks for, a number of them relate to unsatisfied customers. Unreceived orders, products that don’t match their description, defective merchandise, and misrepresented purchase terms are a few of the many reasons customers can legitimately file a chargeback. The best way to defend against consumer disputes is to take care of them with good customer service before they ever reach the chargeback stage. Addressing customer concerns quickly and professionally, and issuing refunds where appropriate, is a far better route to take than risking getting nailed with a chargeback.

 

Fighting Chargebacks

When chargebacks do come in, it’s extremely important that businesses handle them quickly and put up as strong a defense as possible to avoid the negative implication with card issuers and the hefty penalties, which can reach as high as $100 per instance. Successfully doing so comes down to understanding the system and knowing how and when to fight back.

The best response is a timely response:

A chargeback that doesn’t receive a response is a guaranteed loss, and waiting too long to respond isn’t much better. There are strict deadlines that merchants have to meet in filing their chargeback responses, and missing even one of them renders the entire process moot. Arguably the most important factor in filing a timely response is to find out about chargebacks as soon as possible. Some payment processors notify merchants of disputes by mail, which is slow and ineffective. Others, like BAMS, use SMS notifications to alert merchants as soon as a chargeback or retrieval request is filed. That speedy notification is invaluable when it comes to getting a strong defense filed in time.

Know the codes:

Each card issuer has its own set of criteria for what it considers a valid chargeback. Those reasons are managed using a set of codes, and every chargeback request will come with an associated code identifying the reason for the dispute. Understanding what those codes represent is key to filing a valid chargeback defense, so merchants absolutely need to be able to decipher them. Visa’s codes, for instance, are laid out in the Dispute Management Guidelines for Visa Merchants, and cover four major areas – fraud, authorization, processing errors, and consumer disputes.

 

One of the best ways to avoid losses from chargebacks is to partner with a payment processor that understands how serious a concern they are for businesses and offers tools to help mitigate and manage them. BAMS offers a full suite of chargeback tools, including SMS notifications, an online dispute management platform, Verifi integration, zero-liability chargeback assurances, and more.

Contact us today to find out how payment processing with BAMS can help protect your business against unnecessary losses from chargebacks.

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TurboApp – IRIS CRM’s Merchant-Boarding Secret Weapon

Merchant

All BAMS customers receive full access to IRIS CRM, one of the most powerful customer resource management platforms currently available on the market. IRIS CRM provides a full suite of tools that enable companies to manage all aspects of their operations, from communications to leads and prospecting, to sales, to payments, and beyond.

One of IRIS CRM’s most important features is TurboApp, a built-in application designed specifically for independent sales organizations looking to streamline their merchant boarding. With TurboApp, what was once an involved process requiring large amounts of manual entry can now be almost completely automated, allowing users to board new merchants far more efficiently than ever before.


How Does TurboApp Work?

TurboApp integrates directly with the major front-end providers so that the data from merchant applications entered into the IRIS CRM system can be passed right through, all from within the CRM. That’s a revolutionary advancement because it removes the time-consuming step of having to manually process a merchant’s application and then manually transfer all of the relevant information over into an application portal.

Thanks to IRIS CRM’s built-in eSignature functionality, applications are ready to go once they’re passed through to TurboApp, and all an agent has to do is upload the relevant attachments and check over the data to ensure there aren’t any errors.

TurboApp also allows boarding of multi-location merchants from within a single application.  Each location generates its own tab within the overall merchant application, allowing agents to follow the same simple steps as they would for a single-location application and eliminating the time-consuming process of handling data individually for each separate place.

TurboApp integrates with all of the leading front-end solution providers, including First Data Omaha, First Data North, Vantiv, Priority, Pivotal, iPayment, and a number of others. No matter which processor an application is being boarded to, TurboApp allows it all to be done in a matter of a few clicks.

 

The Many Benefits of Using TurboApp for Merchant Loading

The most obvious benefit to TurboApp is the speed with which it allows agents to board new merchants. By eliminating most of the manual work traditionally involved in merchant boarding, TurboApp allows the process to be completed four to seven times faster. That means agents waste less of their time each day on busy work, and can spend more focusing on signing up new accounts and bringing in revenues.

The other major benefit of TurboApp is the promotion of accuracy – an important factor whenever data handling is involved. The traditional boarding process is rife with opportunities for problems. Every time a piece of data is moved manually from one source to another, the possibility for data entry errors exists. Data entry errors can be the difference between an application getting approved or rejected, and as a result, they can be extremely costly. By removing as much manual data handling from the process as possible, TurboApp helps ensure that data quality is never compromised, resulting in more approvals and a fatter bottom line.

 

TurbpApp is a game-changing productivity tool, and it’s only one of the many powerful features include in IRIS CRM. All BAMS merchant services partners get full access to the full IRIS CRM suite, so get in touch with us to find out how you can put this incredible customer resource management tool to work for your company today.

 

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What Is Level 3 Credit Card Processing And How Can It Help Your Business?

Level 3 Credit Card

The average person doesn’t consider the VISA or Mastercard in their pocket to be any different from a company or government credit card – aside from the limit, of course. But there are actually significant differences in how corporate and government cards are used and processed. Those differences mean that not all merchants can accept all types of credit cards, and they also change the way issuing banks view transactions. The result is that merchants who can process these special credit cards – known as Level 3 cards – stand to benefit greatly.

 

Not All Credit Cards Are Created Equal

Banks categorize credit cards differently based on what types of cards they are and, more specifically, what’s required to use them. The credit cards consumers carry in their wallets that make up the vast majority of transactions are classified as Level 1 cards. Level 2 cards are often used for B2B purchases and require extra data to be captured in order to be processed. Finally, the largest corporate and government transactions are done using Level 3 cards, which require even more data to be captured and offer additional control to the cardholder, and additional assurances to the bank.

 

The Benefits of Level 3 Processing

The primary benefit of Level 3 cards to cardholders is the control they offer over card use. To the bank, Level 3 cards represent more fraud-proof transactions thanks to the enormous amount of information that needs to be collected to use the card. In return, the bank offers lower interchange fees to Level 3 payment processors – a kind of reward for the work required to handle all the extra data collection. The savings on those fees add up quickly, and that’s a huge benefit to the end merchant’s bottom line. As a result, companies that deal with larger corporate clients or government agencies should really consider upgrading their payment handling to include Level 3 data capture.

 

Getting Set Up to Take Advantage of Level Three Payments

Processing Level 3 transactions requires the capture of 15 to 20 additional line items on top of the data normally recorded on Level 1 card purchases. Those line items include things like invoice numbers, unit prices, item descriptions, and more. It’s a lot of data to capture, and doing it manually is a headache at best, and an enormous time-sink at worst.  Luckily, some electronic payment processors, like BAMS, can automate the capture and reporting of Level 3 data, allowing merchants to reap all the benefits of accepting Level 3 payments with none of the nightmarish manual data management.

With that in mind Level 3 processing isn’t appropriate for all businesses. At BAMS, checking for Level 3 optimization eligibility is part of our five-step price comparison process and one of the first steps in all of our partnerships. In addition to reduced fees, merchants that do begin accepting Level 3 cards open up a whole new world of high-end clients that other companies simply don’t have access to, so contact us today to find out how we can help your business begin accepting these valuable payments