Awepay

Swiping a credit card is becoming, dare we say...so 2015? More often than not, if you have a small-to-medium-sized business, or a large business for that matter, your customers are inserting a debit or credit card into your new EMV-enabled chip reader to make an in-store payment. The transition began in response to new U.S. standards implemented in October 2015, designed to reduce card-present credit card fraud, and many merchants are now in full chip-card acceptance mode. But did you know that in addition to guarding against fraud, there are many ways that the introduction of chip embedded credit cards are revolutionizing the way U.S. merchants and consumers do business? Let's take a look. 1) Welcome mobile wallets and contactless payments Those new EMV-enabled POS devices not only accept chip cards. Most of them also accept near field communication (NFC) contactless payments. Why is that important? Because today’s early adopters and the future masses of con...

Make sure you're prepared to meet PCI DSS compliance mandates Complying with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) is not just a one-and-done thing. Instead, meeting PCI mandates requires ongoing effort. While the complexities of PCI requirements can seem especially daunting to small- and medium-sized merchants, the requirements actually offer a tangible framework to help secure business systems and processes. By achieving and maintaining PCI DSS compliance, you are not only fulfilling your responsibility to protect sensitive cardholder data, you are taking real steps to help prevent payment card fraud. In fact, PCI compliance offers security benefits that are good for business, helping build customer trust and supporting success over the long term. As a business owner accepting credit card payments, it’s definitely worth your time and effort to meet PCI compliance mandates. Let’s take a closer look. Assessing your PCI DSS compliance The first ste...

Even if your business has not yet adopted an EMV-enabled solution, you’re probably somewhat familiar with the technology since it's among the most talked about developments in payments. EMV has proven to be an effective tool to fight card present payment fraud in Canada and many European countries. While EMV is new to the U.S., payment card fraud is not, with nearly $8.5 billion in fraudulent transactions in the U.S. in 2015 alone. What’s more, the U.S. represents nearly 40 percent of worldwide fraud, despite having less than 25 percent of transaction sales volume. EMV defined So what is EMV? EMV technology is based on specifications developed to ensure worldwide acceptance of secure payments by an organization called EMVCo, a group of leading companies in the payments industry including American Express, Discover, JCB, MasterCard, UnionPay, and Visa and supported by dozens of other companies in the industry. EMV has become the global standard for authenticating credit...

Any merchant that accepts credit card payments is bound to deal with a chargeback at one point or another- it's par for the course when operating a business. But that doesn't make it any easier. In fact, dealing with chargebacks are one of the biggest hassles for merchants that accept credit card payments—and can also be an unwanted, potentially large expense. But there are steps merchants can take minimize their exposure to chargebacks and mitigate their effect on business operations. Let's take a look at some ways that you can reduce your business’s risk of chargebacks. Reduce the risks you take for phone or online orders If you take credit card payments over the phone for your goods or services, it's important to have a process in place to verify that the person on the other end of the phone or internet connection is, indeed, the person to whom the card belongs. Here are some ways you can do this and increase the security of your phone or online orders: ...