April Updates Bring Easier Payments
We’ve got some great news for you and your business: There is no signature required in April 2018 for chip and contactless payments! The card brands that are putting this into effect are MasterCard, Visa, American Express, and Discover. STAR is releasing this industry update a little sooner, April 1st. You’re not being tricked this April Fool’s Day, you’re just getting smaller lines, quicker payments, and happier customers.
Smaller Lines
If you’ve gotten a credit or debit card recently, chances are it’s a chip card. With so many shoppers using this kind of card, you’ll be happy to hear their transaction time will be cut in half. Also, without all of those signatures stored in your processing software, it will be able to run faster, and more efficiently. No signature required in April 2018 means a more streamlined business for you.
Why Is There No Signature Required in April 2018?
Why Is There No Signature Required in April 2018?Why are we getting this update now? We used to require signatures at the point-of-sale device because they were needed to validate a match to the customer’s signature on the transaction document. If you have had a merchant account before, you know that EMV and tokenization technology protects customer information. Therefore, the extra signature security is no longer necessary for security now.
Considerations
Here are some considerations of what this will change for large card companies:
Visa – Signatures Optional for EMV transactions
MasterCard– Merchants will have one less compliance condition to worry about as they won’t be subject to case filings for “failure to ensure signatures on transaction receipt match the back of the card”.
American Express- Merchants can still request signatures if they would like.
How to Best Utilize This Update
At PayFrog, the big four card brands are all processed at the same rate. This means you can utilize this industry update as much as possible by accepting fast, and cheap payments. Even still, none of these benefits help you out if you don’t already accept chip cards or mobile wallets (ie. Apple Pay, Google Pay). Want to service your customers with newer ways of paying without leaving your old “swiping” customers in the dust? Accept it all with an EMV terminal of your own!
