Well, I apologize for not posting sooner. This month just flew by. Something happened last week that just floored me. I was with a merchant, reviewing her credit card statement. She pointed at a charge labeled “POS – entry not qualified” and asked if I knew what is was for as she wasn’t even using a POS system. I looked through the Visa and MasterCard interchange rate sheets to find this item and lo and behold, it doesn’t exist. In other words, it looked like her processor just made it up. I told her she should call the customer service number and ask. She promised to do that and let me know once she got the answer.
Apparently, she waited on hold for over 20 minutes and then was rudely told it was a Visa charge and there was nothing she could do about it. When the merchant asked the customer service rep to explain where she could find this on the Interchange Rates, the CS Rep didn’t even know what interchange rates were.
If you want to review the Interchange Rates you can see them at
Visa: http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/Interchange_Rate_Sheets.pdf
MasterCard: http://www.mastercard.com/us/merchant/how_works/interchange_rates.html
If your credit card company or the salesman trying to get you to change to his company doesn’t know about interchange, that is a problem. For more information about interchange rates and how they impact your credit card processing costs, feel free to comment here or email me directly at michael.matfess@e-hps.com
Take Care!
