When accepting credit cards at your business, it’s important to understand the difference in the way you gather the card information and how that impacts your business. There are two ways to accept card information - card not present present and card present transactions.
Keep reading the learn best practices around each method, and which might make more sense for your business.
Keyed in Payments Online
Keyed-in payments, whether made in person or over the phone, are inherently riskier because there is no verification of whether the card was physically present. Fortunately, there are some simple precautions that you can take to guard against disputes.
Click on each step for a breakdown explanation.
Card Present transactions may be less risky, but there are still some precautions to take.
Card-Present Transactions
Card present vs Card Not Present
A transaction is considered “card-present” only if electronic data is captured at the time of the sale. You can capture data by swiping a magnetic strip card, dipping an EMV chip card, or tapping an NFC / contactless digital wallet with a stored card, like a smartphone using Apple Pay.
All other payment methods constitute “card-not-present” transactions, even if the customer physically brings the card at the time of the transaction. These include but are not limited to online payments, payments toward an invoice, phone payments, and when card information is gathered via image capture.