The current COVID-19 outbreak has created a lot of uncertainty for our bowling community. We understand that in this difficult time you're looking for ways to continue doing business and bringing in revenue while protecting your employees and customers. We wanted to make sure you're aware of some important tips for processing credit cards during this time, courtesy of 360 Payments.
1. Encourage Contactless Payments
In face-to-face transactions, you should encourage your customers to pay via contactless payments, specifically Apple Pay, Google Pay, or tap pay (usually denoted by an image of a credit card with what looks like a wifi signal symbol next to it). Your employee would type the sale amount into the terminal and ask your customer to hover their phone over the terminal without touching it. The terminal will show an approval like normal. Please note that signatures are not required on credit card sales as of April 2018 (article here for your reference). Also, yes, these transactions count as card present! To help you promote contactless payments, we made a “sign” for you to print and post in your business. Click here to get it – you can right click on the image to save it to your computer.
2. Consider Email/Text Invoicing
If you're operating in an area where foot traffic is reduced due to COVID-19 but still want to collect payments on memberships, etc., sending invoices by email and text message can ensure that you will still be paid. 360 Payments offers a variety of options for accepting remote payments. Click here to speak to their team about which one would be best for you.
3. Use a Virtual Terminal
Virtual terminals are another potential solution for when you don't want your employees to touch a customer's physical card. A virtual terminal is a website that can be accessed from anywhere you have an internet connection, and you can use it to key in card information given to you by the customer. For help getting set up with or using a virtual terminal, click here to work with 360 Payments.
4. Accept Payments on Your Website
Believe it or not, it doesn't take a lot of fancy coding to add a simple "Pay Now" button to your website. You can also consider a more robust ecommerce system if you expect to make a significant shift in your business, but if you just want something quick 360 Payments can easily set you up with a simple solution.
5. AVS (Address Verification System)
If you usually take most of your payments in person but have recently switched to mostly over the phone, you might be in for a surprise when your next statement arrives. Credit card issuers (Visa, Mastercard, American Express, etc.) consider payments made when the card is not physically present to be riskier than in-person payments because the risk of fraud is higher. To compensate, they raise your rates on keyed in transactions. To avoid this, make sure your terminals are enabled for AVS (Address Verification System) prompts and that you're entering all the requested data every time - cardholder's street address, zip code, etc.
Contact 360 Payments with any questions by clicking here.
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