The Tax Identification Number is requiredAs part of our legal responsibility to ensure that all electronic payments can correctly be traced to a real company and real people, Dharma is required to collect the Tax Identification Number for every new account. For most businesses, this is your Employer Identification Number [...]
About Payment AggregationFor most merchants, accepting payments is a critical part of doing business. What isn’t always critical is having your own merchant account. There are some situations where leveraging a provider with a master account is a better solution. You are likely familiar with some of the major Payment [...]
PIN vs. Signature - What's the Difference?There are two basic types of debit transactions – PIN Debit, and Signature Debit. You could consider card-not-present debit card transactions as a third type, but since you have no control over them, let’s just set that aside. PIN Debit occurs when a customer [...]
It’s the fairest model out there. Interchange-plus pricing works by adding a constant, flat margin on top of Interchange. So typically, Interchange-plus pricing models will also be written in the two component format, with a percentage fee and per-transaction fee above Interchange. This allows merchant service providers to price their accounts fairly, [...]
A merchant account is an account with a bank that allows a business to accept credit card payments in exchange for their product or service. In order to accept credit cards in-person or online, you’ll need a merchant account. Your merchant account is administered by your Merchant Service Provider (MSP) – [...]
A payment gateway is the online-equivalent of a credit card terminal. The payment gateways’ job is to encrypt, and then securely authorize a credit card transaction. Payment gateways are fundamentally required when accepting a credit card transaction online, because they’re responsible for storing sensitive credit card data. Sometimes these gateways [...]
Let's set the stage first. Every time a sale processes, there are two unique steps. The first step is the authorization, which happens in real-time. The moment a card is swiped/dipped/keyed-in, the issuing bank of the customer’s card is contacted, and an authorization is generated. The card is either approved, or it’s declined. [...]
This is a big question for retail merchants these days. Many merchants find themselves asking, “Do I need to accept PIN-debit?” Historically, the answer to this question depended on many factors, primarily cost differences and time saved with PIN entry. However, with the advent of EMV technology and regulations, PIN [...]
First, let’s define factoring. Factoring is the act of accepting credit card payments on behalf of another business/organization. For example – let’s say you own a bakery, accepting payments for cookies, cakes, etc. Let’s also pretend that you start a side-business selling car parts on the internet. If you were to start taking payments for [...]
Address Verification is a very important step in any card-not-present sale. Whenever you accept a card without physically seeing the card, you inherently run a much higher risk of accepting a fraudulent card. As a merchant, you want to do everything in your power to reduce that risk. There are [...]