Digital Transactions
The weighted average cost of payment acceptance is expected to have doubled from around 0.8% in 2009 to over 1.6% by 2025.[i] Fueled by the abundance of rewards cards, the shift to online payments, and the rise of commercial purchasing cards, merchants are experiencing higher transactions fees.
You can take an active role in helping your merchants rein in the rising cost of payment acceptance. Work with a partner armed with practical solutions to identify opportunities to help your customers take the sting out of the cost of payments. Let’s take a closer look.
Four ways to optimize transaction costs
- Avoid transaction downgrades – Downgrades occur when a transaction doesn’t meet the minimum requirements for the target Interchange category. The costs add up, but the good news is that they are easily avoidable.
How you can help: Educate your merchants about the importance of including Address Verification Service (AVS) data for keyed transactions, settling transactions daily, ensuring authorization and settlement amounts match, and separating purchase amounts from sales tax and tips.
- Optimize commercial cards – Businesses and government agencies that process a large volume of commercial card transactions can reduce related expenses by transmitting purchase details with each transaction. Validating authentic transactions with purchase information results in less risk and lower interchange rates. However, Level 2 and Level 3 data entry—up to 25 specific data fields—is time-consuming and prone to error.