Payment Processing Procedures to Be Followed When the Terminal Is Not Working

Most of us have attempted a credit card payment at a grocery store and our card has been rejected. If you are on the other side of the transaction, you will need to know how to handle such situations quickly and without creating any further complications, so that the customer can complete the transaction without wasting too much time. In this post I will go over the issues that may prevent cards from being read and will suggest a list of payment processing procedures to be followed to complete the transactions in a way that is compliant with industry regulations.

What Prevents the Card from Being Read?

There are several major reasons why the card account information cannot be read, including:

• The merchant's equipment is not functioning properly.
• The customer is not swiping the card correctly.
• The card itself is somehow damaged, typically there is an issue with the magnetic stripe. It is important to realize that such issues may be caused inadvertently, but they may also be the result of a fraudulent tampering with the card.

How to Process Payments When the Magnetic Stripe Cannot Be Read?

Following is a list of procedures that you should follow when your terminal cannot read the card:

• Before taking any further action, inspect the terminal to see if it is working properly and also you may have to help your consumer with the swiping the card.
• If the terminal is functioning properly and the card is swiped as it should be, inspect the card itself to ensure that it is not altered or tampered with.
• If the problem is caused by the card itself, you have several options to handle the situation and you will be well advised to create a policy to be followed every time such a situation exists. For example you may consider asking the customer for an alternative method of payment (e.g. cash, another card, etc.). Or you can override the swipe and key-enter the transaction information. Yet another alternative is to request a voice authorization approval from your merchant services provider.
• If your policy is to manually enter the payment data or to obtain a voice authorization, industry regulations require you to take an imprint of the front of your customer's card. The image of the imprint should be placed on the main receipt of the transaction or you can create a separate one and have it signed by your consumer. This is crucial, because it gives you protection in cases of chargebacks.

Be prepared to pay higher processing fees, if you key-enter transaction information.