How to Accept Credit Cards in 5 Easy Steps at Your Retail Store

When you accept credit card payments in a face-to-face environment, you benefit for the lowest payment processing rates available. The reason is that such payments are typically more secure and tend to result in fraud much less often than non-face-to-face payments. By definition, card-present transactions are payments where both the card and the cardholder are physically present at the checkout. Card-present settings include checkouts at supermarkets, convenience stores, restaurants, etc.

Note that the requirement is for the customer and her card to be present, not the merchant. What this means is that payments where cardholders use unattended payment stations, such as POS terminals at gas stations, for example.

Businesses accepting cards in face-to-face settings are mandated to make all possible efforts to ensure that all payments are genuine. To achieve that, everyone working at the POS terminals must be very well versed in the transaction processing procedures.

However, whether the person manning the POS machine is experienced at the job or not, if they follow a few simple procedures for each transaction, they will be certain to achieve the targeted results every time a bank card is submitted by a customer.

So with that in mind, a typical face-to-face transaction goes through the following stages:

1. Swiping the card. The cardholder swipes her card through the POS terminal's slot to complete the payment. Be prepared to assist your customer when needed and show her how to do it if she is having difficulties swiping. When the swipe is accepted, take the card in your possession for inspection.
2. Inspect the card. After the swipe goes through, the information is sent to the card issuer for authorization and you typically have a few seconds before you receive the response. Use them to examine the card for signs of alteration. Take a look at the security features and make sure they are all valid and have not been tampered with. In particular, inspect the expiration date, card number and cardholder name.
3. Obtain your customer's signature. After the authorization approval is received, obtain your customer's signature on the printed transaction receipt. If your store policies do not require signatures on transactions below a certain amount, skip this and the next steps for these low amounts.
4. Check the signatures. Compare the signature placed by your customer on the transaction receipt to the one on the card.
5. Complete the payment. If your actions have not discovered anything suspicious, complete the transaction and give your customer a copy of the receipt, along with the purchased item. However, if you have a cause for suspicion, you will need to make a Code 10 call to your voice authorization center to receive instructions on how to proceed.

If you do this every time, you will receive the lowest available processing fees for all of your transactions.