Some Miscellaneous Stuff

Here are a few bits of news important to credit card processing, that may be relevant to your business.

Omni 3740 and 3750 say goodbye. Nearly every processor I know of says they will no longer support these terminals, most as of October 2012. That means if you have one, come November, it will no longer process cards. The most common replacements are the Verifone VX510 (for dial up accounts) and the VX570 (internet processing.) Those are Central Payments free terminals, so if you have an old Omni you can upgrade for free.

Visa is introducing a new fee in April. A 'fixed acquirer network fee, it will add $2.00 to $2.90 to most merchant accounts. Theoretically a business can recoup the costs through a lowered network fee, but don't count on it. When this was first announced it seemed some processors (including Central Payment) were leaning toward assuming the fee on behalf it's merchants, but now all the processing companies are treating it as a pass-through. The fee can be very expensive for companies with thousands of locations that process millions of dollars (read: Wal Mart and McDonalds) and if the processors assume the $2.00 for Bob's Diner they will have to assume the hundreds of thousands of dollars for the mega-merchants also.

And finally, The IRS formally drives processors to the brink of ruin for no good reason.  As most of you are probably aware, the IRS decided "it would not require merchants to explain how and why their business income differs from their credit card receipts in 2012, nor do we intend to require reconciliation in future years.

Now that processing companies have spent millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of man hours, trying to match merchant information with what the government had on file, not to mention scaring the beJesus out of merchants with the punishment nightmares they (the merchants) would face for non-compliance- the IRS says "Just kiddin." This comes after some processing companies spent a year charging merchants up to $20.00 a month for 'IRS compliance', too.

That's what's happening in my world- if you have any questions about any of the above, or electronic payment processing in general, holler to me at bswitzer@cpay.com.