About

I’m Michael Matfess, a relationship manager for Heartland Payment Systems.  Heartland Payment Systems is a direct processor of credit cards for merchants with a national reputation as the founder of the Merchant Bill of Rights.  A manifesto of rights for business owners who elect to accept credit and debit card payments. 

I decided to begin this blog because I have discovered that many business owners have never had the opportunity to understand how they are being charged for their credit and debit transactions nor have they been given the imortant knowledge about how to protect themselves from data theft.  This is because the majority of the unregulated resellers in the credit processing arena have no interest in taking the time to educate their customers.  My philosophy is that an educated owner is my best customer.

Please feel free to comment on my entries or contact me with any questions.  I am always more than happy to educate people about the industry and help you to reduce costs and increase profitability.

Thanks for reading and contributing tho this blog!

Michael

You can reach by email at michael.matfess@e-hps.com

One Response to “About”

  1. Donna Berna Says:
    May 27, 2008 at 9:47 pm

    My friend has a Heartland payment systems thing in his restaurant to process all his cards and he has some severe chargeback issues that he was never notified about. He was never given a chance to produce a charge slip or even be notified about it, so I thought it was funny when you wrote about how if the merchant had a slip where he had imprinted the card and all. Anyway please contact me if you think you know how this works?

    thanks,
    Donna

    Here is my reply:
    Donna,
    I know exactly how it works. When a customer questions a charge on his credit card statement he contacts the issuing bank for Mastercard or Visa; but for Discover or American Express he contacts them as the issuer and they handle their own chargebacks. Because Amex and Discover feel a greater loyalty to the end user than the cardholder they can sometimes be less than merchant friendly. However, if it a MasterCard or Visa and they are a Heartland merchant, then they get a mailed request for proof of the charge AND an email request (if Heartland has the owner’s email on file). I know this is how WE do it as I have seen it many times without fail. In addition, our merchants have access to their accounts online through our Secure Merchant Center which also would have let him know of the chargeback request.

    My guess is that it is more likely that your friend didn’t open/read the notice when it came, or a subordinate thought it was junk mail and pitched it, than that the notification was never sent as this process is fully automated. He should call Heartland’s service center and ask them when notices were sent and to what email account and confirm they aren’t going to a spam folder or being blocked by his email server.

    Again, this is not the case for Amex and Discover. They handle their own chargebacks so if the problems are on those cards he needs to contact them directly.

    I hope this answers your questions and feel free to contact me with any others.

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