CBOSS strives to be on the forefront of security and compliance, in order to protect the data of our clients and their customers. As the result of ten-plus years of audits, CBOSS has developed a comprehensive set of policies and procedures for managing and securing payment data. These policies, along with dedicated training, ensure the safety of sensitive information. This blog will outline the information that needs protected, as well as some best practices your organization can follow.
Accepting Credit Cards can be an intimidating task for any business, and is bound to come with many questions. In order to help you decide if becoming a credit card merchant is a good fit, we have included some common questions and answered them below. These questions deal with three areas new merchants often have questions about: price, compliance, and e-commerce.
The ability to accept credit and debit cards is crucial for businesses in today’s competitive landscape, but when it comes to transaction and processing fees, things can get expensive – and confusing - quickly. While there are a variety of pricing structures offered through different payment processing partners, it can be difficult to decide which structure is best for your business. Often times, merchants fail to realize they have a choice when it comes to these fees, and their goal should be to obtain the best rate possible for their specific business type. To help lessen the confusion, we’ve put together a cohesive look at each standard pricing structure and what they will ultimately mean for your business’ bottom-line.
First thing’s first, let’s set the stage by giving you our best definition of an ISV. An ISV is the acronym given to independent software vendors; organizations in this vertical develop and sell software often used by other businesses. ISVs primarily provide robust management platforms for specific industries with an underlying goal to consistently provide a seamless experience for their users. That means they’re likely partnering with other companies to leverage integration opportunities to continue building more comprehensive solutions. When an ISV is able to participate in a partnership to integrate payment acceptance into their platform, their software becomes even more valuable to their business users.
CBOSS, Inc. is pleased to announce the completion of the latest initiative in our continuing efforts to offer robust, scalable, and secure payment systems. To support our customers more efficiently and securely we have partnered with Iron Mountain Data Centers, for data center management and colocation services.
With this partnership, CBOSS has migrated all production systems to IMDC datacenters, offering numerous benefits for CBOSS and its customers:
Tier III Infrastructure
All production CBOSS systems are now operating on IMDC’s Uptime Institute Tier III rated infrastructure. This means everything from power, to cooling, to network uplinks are all fully redundant, and concurrently maintainable. All vital distribution paths are separated, eliminating single points of failure from CBOSS systems, to the outside world. Combined with CBOSS’ fully redundant network architecture, this means the highest possible availability and the least possible downtime for customers dependent on CBOSS services.
Part 7: Compelling Evidence for Chargeback Responses
Now that you have learned about the chargeback process in Part 6, the final step is to learn what kind of evidence you should be sending to fight a chargeback to put together a compelling case.
In every Chargeback Management Guide from the card networks, it is stated that “compelling evidence” must be supplied at various points in the process. Just like how every network’s chargeback process is slightly different, every network has slightly different criteria for what makes evidence compelling enough to give a favorable ruling to a merchant. One thing common across all networks is that compelling evidence must include some form of documentation i.e. receipt, transaction history, contract, etc. It is not enough to simply state “Jimmy was a repeat customer.” You, as the merchant, must provide Jimmy’s transaction history from your records for anyone to accept this evidence. Make sure to consult the card network’s Chargeback Management Guidelines when you receive a chargeback, so you can verify what evidence is required and how it needs presented. Below are links to the major card networks’ Chargeback Management Guidelines.
MasterCard Chargeback Guidelines
Part 6: Visa Claims Resolution
The first 5 posts outlined everything your organization needs to know about chargebacks and how to prevent them, but what happens when your organization gets one anyway? The chargeback dispute process, called “Claims Resolution” by Visa and “Chargeback Re-Presentment” by the other big networks can be a long and arduous process that often ends in higher fees and a judgement in favor of the customer. If you know the system, how to properly respond to chargebacks, and most importantly when to cut your losses, you can successfully mitigate their impact on your bottom line.
In an effort to increase automation and effectiveness, and decrease the time it takes to process a chargeback and the amount of fraudulent chargebacks, Visa recently overhauled their entire chargeback process. This post will outline how Visa Claims Resolution (VCR) works, and how your organization can effectively use it to reduce your chargeback costs.
CBOSS is pleased to announce that one of our own, Mike Lendvay, has achieved the Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) certification.
Part 5: Preventing Chargebacks with Security and Verification
In part 4, it was stated that chargeback management isn’t all about security codes and PCI protocol, while this is true, they are still a pivotal piece of the chargeback management puzzle. While the tips in the last post were designed to help reduce chargebacks related to customer complaints, these tips will help reduce fraud related chargebacks. This post will discuss security and verification best practices that will help to keep your systems secure and your customers’ information safe.
Part 4: Preventing Chargebacks with Good Business Practices
Now that you have learned all the basics on chargebacks in parts 1, 2 and 3, it is now time to get down to business. The next three parts of this blog series will discuss the important tasks of preventing and disputing chargebacks. While many people believe that preventing chargebacks is all about security codes and PCI protocol, honest and transparent business practices are the biggest part of preventing chargebacks. This post will focus on these best practices. Implementing these suggestions should not only lead to less chargebacks, but more satisfied customers as well.