You would not be able to accept credit or debit cards without them. You'd have no way of checking the validity of a card or of ever getting money from the cardholder's bank. But that doesn't mean they have all the power. The truth is: the processor also needs you. They make their money by processing transactions, less transactions equal less money and no business wants that.

One of the great advantages of a gateway solution like $ $ $ ON THE NET is that you have the power to regain some of the control in the relationship with your processor. For a merchant without a gateway, the ability to switch between processors is greatly hampered because expensive and time consuming programming is required at the point-of-sale (whereas with Shift4 it's as easy as filling out a form). Processors and MSPs realize this and spend most of their time working to bring in new customers and little time servicing the ones that already exist. (NOTE: MSPs, or Merchant Service Providers, are the ones who sell the processor's services directly to the merchant, they're the ones who signed you up for processing and helped you get setup.)

So what does this mean to you? Simple, it might be time to negotiate. The processing industry is an increasingly competitive place. As the acceptance of credit cards has sky rocketed so too has the number of MSPs and processors. There is an increased level of competition. MSPs are constantly offering lower and lower discount rates to attract new customers from the competition.

If you haven't had a change to your discount rate since you initially signed up with your MSP or if it's been a couple of years, now is the time to renegotiate. You can compare bids from different MSPs or processors to get the best rate. You can use these rates to change MSPs or to negotiate with your existing provider who is often more than willing to adjust their rates if they know you are looking at alternatives.

Shift4 is completely bank and processor neutral. We are not advocating that you make a switch. If you're happy with the rate and service you receive now, great. However, if you want to see

what alternatives are out there, remember that with $ $ $ ON THE NET you can quickly, easily and inexpensively switch processors.

TECH TIPS

Why do my transactions 'time out' and what can I do about it?

When a transaction times out it is because of a communication error somewhere along the payment process. Communication errors can occur at WAN/Internet level (meaning your Internet carrier is down), the LAN level (your POS system is having trouble communicating with the NetAPI software) or at the processor level (i.e. communication problems between Shift4 and the processor or the processor and the issuing bank). Shift4 has designed redundancy into every aspect of our solution to avoid these time outs whenever possible. It is not a common occurrence, but it is one that we wanted you to be aware of.

The majority of time outs received are caused by issues at the processor level. Unfortunately, each processor handles transactions, communications and irregularities differently, so the time out can be returned for any number of reasons. Occasionally, the processor outage is merchant specific, meaning the processor is not responding because it feels it is receiving invalid data or has placed a database lock on a ‘problem' merchant. The vast majority of time outs, however, are universal issues or problems faced by all merchants trying to utilize a certain processor. Most often, it is caused by maintenance.

All processors perform daily maintenance, generally for 1-2 hours a day. However, because most processors have multiple platforms, your processing capabilities are affected for less than a minute a day (unfortunately, that was the same minute you were trying to authorize a transaction). This is why, more often than not, if you wait five minutes the problem will appear to have corrected itself. Rest assured, if a processor is down for any other reason or for any longer period of time, Shift4 is already aware and diligently working to correct it.

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