Welcome to part 8 of our 12 part series – “Tell Me the Best Merchant Solution for My Business.” In this chapter we will discuss the following questions: “How secure is my money? How long after a payment is made until the funds are in our business checking account?”
When running merchant services processing for your business there are two very real concerns that many businesses have. Simply put companies want their money made securely and fast. This should be standard in today’s world of fast processing.
Security
In short as long-as your merchant service provider is PCI compliant you should be safe in getting your payments quickly made to your bank account. By law, all merchant services processors must be PCI compliant. You want a provider that is Level 1, PCI Complaint which is the highest level of PCI compliance. Level 1 PCI Compliance means that your provider has been audited by an outside firm and that they to meet or exceed standards for using PCI complaint merchant software, merchant equipment, data storage of credit card and billing data, employee background checks, processes for updating programs and more. If your provider is Level 1 PCI complaint then all transactions are made, all money is moved, and all data is stored using the most advanced encryption and firewalls that are used for financial protection.
Fast Deposits
Your merchant account provider should be able to ensure all deposits are made within 24 hours of a transaction being completed. It could be done faster if you would like, yet there are extra fees associated with faster movement of your money. What essentially happens is that upon signup for your merchant account you let your merchant services provider know what account you would like your merchant account deposits made into and fees taken out of. Then daily your company will run all transactions. Daily, at the time of your choosing all of the transactions from the past day will then be batched and placed into your business checking account. Most providers usually charge a batch header free of $0.05 to $0.10 for this service, so if you would like to do it more often your monthly fees will go up.
Keep on reading. Our next chapter of this 12 part merchant service series will be part 9, “How secure is my customers data, including their credit card information? Is the solution you are providing me PCI complaint?”
