Do You Accept Credit Cards Over the Phone?

[grassospizza1993]

With all this new chip technology for credit cards I’m leery to accept credit card numbers read over the phone. At least with a face to face transaction you can request to see the person’s drivers license.

 

[bodegahwy]

We do for a solid majority of transactions. Not sure what the chip technology has to do with it though. Do you live in a place with a lot of CC problems? We have done thousands of transactions and never had a problem. I could see not taking cards over the phone costing a lot of sales… certainly more than any risk of CC fraud. I might feel differently for a large transaction… say over $300 but even then I could have the driver check ID.

 

[d9phoenix]

I agree with Bodegahwy. I have actually hit over 95% sales in CC (was a sad day), but generally i run 60-70% CC sales. Of which maybe 80% are over the phone, i would go out of business in 1 week if i did not accept CC over the phone.

 

[Daddio]

I have 3 portable machines that take all the major credit cards as well as Debit and Gift cards. My cost is $20 per machine per month which in my opinion is worth not having to pay the keyed rate for taking the card over the phone. The machines are set up to read the chips on the cards as well as the mag stripe.

 

[GotRocks]

I’ve been wanting to do mobile readers, but our cell coverage is very sketchy in this area, data coverage is even worse, so we’ll just continue to do manual over the phone

We process with Mercury on VX805’s, the manual card phone transactions require both the “Secret Squirrel” number, and the billing address zip-code, I believe this lessens fraud for not handling an actual card.
But, I did do a corporate card for a catered event over the phone, got a message that the zip did not match, yet the card was still approved. So I am confused

 

[wa_dave]

We do CC over the phone for a huge majority of deliveries. As long as you log the CCV 3 digit number on the back of the card you are safe.
Our EFTPOS is via the internet and when it went down fora day and a half we lost about 30% of our deliveries as they didn’t have cash to pay for the order.
Like it or not we are rapidly heading for a cashless society and CC will be the norm for all transactions. Current we run between 60 - 70% on CC, 10 -15% Online and the remainder cash.
Pay Pass is now around 60% of all credit card transactions in shop.
Dave

 

[MrHowie]

The reality is you can ask for ID, but if the card is signed, the customer can say no and you still have to take the card. It’s in the merchant agreements. To the same effect, a card with See ID on it is technically not valid becuase it is not signed. So, does it really matter how you take the card? I personally don’t think so. Ultimately Visa and Mastercard and the aquirers, etc. do not have the merchant’s best interest in mind (Read your merchant agreement). That all being said, we are about 60% credit cards and about half of that is over the phone. I get a chargeback or 2 a year usually, but it’s part of it. I would love to take the card at the door, but some nights, running 10 drivers I just don’t see it working for me.

 

[Steve_P]

Even if you do have the driver take the card at the door, unless you are using the chip you will still have the liability if the card is fraudulent. This whole EMV thing is to change the liability from the issuing bank to you. For the most part unless you process the card using the chip the liability will be on you.