E-Commerce Credit Card Processing Post Authorizations

Every time an e-commerce credit card processing transaction is approved by the issuer, the merchant should send a confirmation prior to completing and fulfilling the order. If the payment is rejected, however, your manual needs to specify how to handle the situation with the consumer and decide whether this type of rejection can be prevented in the future. Proceed in a manner that best serves the consumer and your own business by incorporating these best merchant services practices:

• Provide an email order confirmation for all approved payments. This will enable you to verify the validity of the customer's email address. If it is not valid, evaluate the situation to decide whether the order is authentic. You can also limit customer disputes by sending email order confirmations that notify the consumer of the approved sale and provides information about it.
• Examined rejected authorizations and take adequate actions. In most cases, it may be helpful to have your customer support representatives examine authorizations rejected by the issuers and receive corrected data or another form of payment that can enable you to proceed safely with the e-commerce credit card processing transaction.
  • Queue authorization rejections for examination and contact consumers to correct issues with their cards - for example incorrect date of expiration - or obtain other types of payment.
  • If the payment information is corrected, make sure you obtain an authorization approval prior to completing the sale.
  • Monitor the success rate of your rejection review strategy and adjust it, as may be needed.
• Monitor order rejection ratios. This vital practice can help you raise your approval rates and payment volume, and locate potential problems resulting from changes in the authorization procedures.
  • To be able to identify trends, monitor order rejections by reason code on a daily basis.
  • Separate issuer declines as opposed to those you reject for suspected fraud or any other reasons.

The authorization process needs to be well managed as it has a major impact on risk, customer support, and operational costs. E-commerce credit card processing that are shipping the products to the consumer more than seven days post the original authorization date, (so-called back-order), you will have to obtain a new authorization approval prior to proceeding with the shipment.

E-commerce credit card processing businesses need to use the Electronic Commerce Indicator (ECI) for all of their transactions. When included into the adequate fields of the authorization and settlement messages, the ECI signifies the sale as e-commerce. This frees the merchant from receiving a referral response and enables the issuer make a better informed authorization decision. The ECI also enables the merchant meet web transaction processing requirements. Work with your processor to incorporate the ECI, which is mandated by Visa for all online transactions.