Understanding your bill and identifying areas of cost savings

Now more than ever, examining where you can achieve cost savings quickly is critical.

One area e-commerce businesses can consider? Your merchant account services fees. 

Examining your monthly bill can feel overwhelming (like looking at your monthly cable bill): undefined line items of charges with little explanation of what you're really paying for. 

The M.O.M. Helpers Team wanted to provide a short series to educate e-commerce business owners so you can better take control and weigh potential cost savings.

Payment Gateway

What is it?

A payment gateway acts as an intermediary between your M.O.M. system and all the banking systems. This is a seamless process and your CSR's do not interact (or manually re-enter credit card information) with the gateway. The credit card and customer details are submitted from M.O.M. via the gateway, which securely sends the information through the relevant financial networks to the merchant account, encrypting sensitive data, such as cardholder information and credit card numbers. 

How does it work?

To accept credit and debit cards online through your M.O.M. system you need both a secure payment gateway (Authorize.Net) and a merchant account.

Transaction Fees

What is it?

A transaction is an individual entry sent through the gateway (securely) to be processed.     

How does it work?

Bank card issuing associations receive the transaction and accept or decline the charge and communicate the results and details as a response for the M.O.M. system to record.  

Per Transaction

The transaction fee is a contribution for the convenience of accepting credit card payments, a gateway fee pays for the use of the infrastructure to receive payment information, request authorization from the customer's bank, transmit the authorization information to the merchant and to facilitate payment of the merchant.   

Percentage

A percentage of the sale for the use of their cards and this amount is referred to as a transaction fee. The percentage paid by the merchant may vary depending on the monthly sales volume, the average sale size and whether a transaction is processed with or without the card being physically present.

The transaction fee is a contribution for the convenience of accepting credit card payments, a gateway fee pays for the use of the infrastructure to receive payment information, request authorization from the customer's bank, transmit the authorization information to the merchant and to facilitate payment of the merchant.  

Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) 

What is it?

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of security standards designed to ensure that ALL companies that accept, process, store or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment. 

The PCI Security Standards Council (SSC) defines 'cardholder data' as the full Primary Account Number (PAN) or the full PAN along with any of the following elements:

How does it work?

M.O.M. as a payment application stores, processes and transmits card data electronically to facilitate the transactions for your business.  It protects your customers' confidential payment details while allowing you to process their payment securely.

It is important that the system is secure and protected from intrusive activities.

M.O.M. Helpers' Ability

M.O.M. Helpers Card Services will lower your costs.

The merchant bank allows you to accept credit card payments --  Visa/Mastercard/AMEX/Discover.  They also take the daily settled (captured) transactions and deposit them into your checking account.

Merchant accounts charge a variety of % against your sales volumes, per transaction fees, per authorization fees, and monthly fees.

We also have the ability to offer you a full review of your merchant account and replace that bank that may be charging excessive fees and replace it with a bank that would simplify the fee process as well as offer direct support to assist with everyday Credit Card processing questions.  The process keeps the Authorize.net gateway fully operational in M.O.M. and in your Shopping Cart. while directly reducing the monthly fees, the % against sales, and the per transaction fees.  This process takes about an hour to complete and you can be operational in 24-48 hours.

We have the ability to keep this account fully operational in M.O.M. and in your Shopping Cart. while directly reducing both the monthly and per transaction fees.  This process takes 5 minutes of review and a quick signature on a form where you agree to pay lower fees.

We have the ability to replace the Merchant bank for you and to reduce or eliminate what can sometimes be a large variety of excessive fees that you are paying today.   This process takes about an hour to complete and you can be operational in 24-48 hours.

M.O.M. Helpers Cloud is PCI Compliant and Secure

The M.O.M. Helpers Cloud is a proprietary hosting environment to host your M.O.M. system for use from anywhere with internet access.  It is PCI Compliant.  

The M.O.M. Helpers Cloud is PCI DSS compliant and scanned regularly to ensure that we are keeping your M.O.M. system secure.

We secure any version of M.O.M.  

You don't have to upgrade or change software to protect your cardholder data. This ensures that you don't have to worry about PCI Compliance.

It is quick, easy, and inexpensive.

Learn more about solutions specific to your business by visiting us at momhelpers.com or by emailing me at bbanko@momhelpers.com.