Deferred Credit Card Processing
From: merchantseek.com.
If you defer credit
card processing, you cannot fill the orders immediately.
So, this processing method is more suitable for businesses that
cannot deliver their goods over the Internet.
The advantage of using deferred processing is that you can
inspect your orders manually, and correct them before you ship
the order. For example, a customer called you and told you that
he is from a non-profit organization, and arranged a 20%
discount on his purchase. He can still use the order form, and
then you can correct his order. You can do any discounts or
surcharges for any orders, or otherwise edit the orders, before
you process them. Real-time processing doesn't provide this
convenience.
When order cards are processed, the credit card issuer's
network may be down. This is especially true, if your customers
are in China, Brazil, or other distant countries. In these
cases, the credit card processor returns the 'CALL CENTER'
answer, which means that you must call the center to authorize
the transaction. If you do real-time processing, these
transactions will be reported to the customer as declined. Not
only do you loose a sale, but the customer may be confused by
the answer.
Deferred processing is much cheaper than real-time processing
because you do not have to pay anybody for any special
processing. All you need is a credit card processing software,
which you can buy for $350-400. You can use this software for
both Internet and phone orders, which is a big advantage. You do
not incur any additional costs for processing. The orders are
delivered to you by your storefront software and then processed.
However, deferred processing requires daily attention because
you need to download your orders and process them every day.
This may be just a single mouse click, but it needs your
attention every day.
If you use deferred processing, the orders stored on the server
must be securely encrypted. If the orders are just e-mailed to
you, then anyone with administrative privileges on the server
can read the orders and steal card numbers. So, before you use
the system, ask your ISP or storefront software vendor how the
orders are encrypted to secure the orders against hackers.
It is not easy to decide which method is the best for you
because you have to choose a storefront software consider
integration issues. at the same time, and We will talk about
storefront software in one of our next issues.