Merchant Account Automatic Billing Updater

When cardholders sign up for automatic payment arrangements with their credit cards, they typically do not discontinue them. Rather, the primary reason cardholders ever switch cards is the odd service disruption that occurs due to a routine account change, such as with the card expiration date, account number or other changes in account information.

The Credit Card Networks of MasterCard and Visa offer automatic billing updaters that increase the card's usability and helps keep the service uninterrupted, which translates into higher customer satisfaction and loyalty (and, incidentally, lower customer service calls), as well as helping locking customers in and increasing revenue streams.

Additionally, the automatic billing updaters help merchant account users flip and sell portfolios seamlessly, while enabling card issuers to minimize their risk liability.

Transaction rejection and the processing of exception items add up to significant management and operating costs. Additionally, declines in recurring payment rates can be on average as high as 20 percent to 25 percent, a much higher rate than the 6 percent average for card-present transactions.

The Networks' automatic billing updater systems allow merchant account providers to offer another value-added service, and a very powerful one, thus helping payment processing services account users to minimize these costs and lower them down to levels that are more consistent with those of card-present transactions. The automatic management of accurate cardholder account data that the Networks provide helps merchant account providers increase payment volume and improve business with existing merchants using automatic payment arrangements, i.e. recurring and installment plans. These solutions can also assist processors in attracting new card acceptors as recurring payments plans are increasing in popularity and boast higher satisfaction levels among their existing users.

During each billing period, merchant account users with recurring or installment payment arrangements expect the same bad news: that a great number of card payments will be rejected by the card issuers. Such transaction rejections are not only frustrating for cardholders, but they also negatively affect the card acceptor's revenue flows. And as if that were not enough, they lead to higher rates of customer service inquiries through forcing card acceptors to contact consumers and request that they update their account information on file or provide an alternative form of payment.

The Networks' automatic billing updater leads to uninterrupted service for consumers and easy payments for merchant account users. It quickly and painlessly updates card account data, without actually impacting consumers in any way. What is more, these services can promote customer satisfaction, which increases customer loyalty and minimizes the likelihood of them switching to a competitor.