Restaurant POS Solutions: Accepting Credit Cards

Sept. 7, 2009 - PRLog -- A few of the best practices in restaurant point of sale systems - boosting sales and eliminating chargebacks!

Taking Charge Of Everything

In our world today, every cent counts so by adding them to your bottom line is also a big help. The steps here will increase your profits, by boosting your sales, reducing debit card fees and expenses, and most of all block theft.

Business in the food service industry, if you're running a restaurant point of sale system then this tips can greatly help you grow your business!

Checks

Checks may not may not seem appealing to younger customers, but their still widely used especially among older customers. If you haven’t been accepting checks, start soon. There are POS equipments that can scan checks easily and quickly as debit cards, check out and measure them against a nationwide database of bad check writers, electronically deposit the money, and guarantee you receive your funds within a few days. In addition, the cost is typically lower than for credit cards and could add 10-15 percent to sales—and possibly more if you have many senior customers.

Accepting All Cards

Of course you already accept Visa and MasterCard. What about Discover and American Express? Particularly, the latter accompanies larger transactions in general. You might have felt hesitated because of the fee, but reconsider—the difference might be a paltry one percent or so, and since American Express transactions are often larger than those of other cards, you’ll make it up in gross profit. Furthermore, if you’re known for accepting all forms of credit and debit cards, customers would probably be more likely to visit again.

Researching Helps

Many merchants think their fees are 1.69 percent plus an additional $.19 because that’s their qualified rate on a pricing program tier. But often fewer than 20 out of 100 transactions receives low qualified rate and all the rest downgrade and cost one, two, or even three percent. By researching for alternate programs that offer different interchange rates could possibly help you more than you think.

Understandable Statements

Neither you nor your bookkeeper would have to scratch the back of your heads over a complex credit card statement that just doesn’t fit. There are several companies that have made far more than usual efforts to simply their reports. You should be able to reconcile your statement and rates in no more than 15 minutes.

Get Reports Over The Internet

You'll never have to wait for the post office to deliver a letter disputing a charge. Using internet reporting, you will know within 24 hours, allows you to aggressively defend against chargebacks. With this kind of quick response, it can help increase your success rates and reduce your losses.

So there will be no more scratching of the head for you and your bookkeeper over complex credit card statements.

Using Card Validation Value and Address Verification System. These highly effective fraud screens proven to reduce losses, and when using them correctly, you can achieve the lowest possible discount rate.

Another thing, you need to avoid hackers by being PCI compliant. Hackers can cause you huge fines, and even drives them out of business. Find time to read Visa’s report on non-compliant systems, you need to be alert in order to protect your business.

Reducing Chargebacks

For Internet and phone orders, implementing the “Verified by Visa” or “MasterCard Secure Code” plug-in on your web site eliminates all cardholder nonauthorization chargebacks. Liability for these chargebacks will be shifted away from you to the issuing card bank, and you qualify for the lowest discount rate available. This simple step could eliminate up to 80 percent of all chargebacks and increase your profits.

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Want To Ask a Point of Sale (POS) Expert?

You can visit http://www.pos-for-restaurants.com anytime for more information or advice about this topic, a Restaurant POS professional serving your area will be willing to answer your questions.

The author of this article writes for POS-For-Restaurants.com - a VP of Customer Relations with over 20 years experience in the restaurant point of sale industry.

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