CREDIT CARD 101

American Express CAPN

Many of our merchants and partners who accept American Express transactions have received a letter from American Express about their new Card Acceptance and Processing Network (CAPN) specifications. Basically, what the letter addresses is that American Express is in the process of altering their authorization and settlement specifications.  The letter states that if a system is not compliant with the CAPN specs by October 31 st of 2006 than there will be an out-of-compliance fee of 25 cents added per transaction. 

Several of you have contacted us about the letter to see what it is you need to do to comply. The answer is simple, nothing.  There are no merchant changes or changes to the POS/PMS and no re-certification necessary. Shift4 continues to work with American Express to test the system and upgrade any necessary changes, which will be completed by the end of the 1 st Quarter 2006.

OVERCOMING COMMON 'NO's'

Our competitors often try to use the fact that we charge a per transaction fee as a negative, claiming we are more expensive. While we never claim to be the low price leader, if you compare Return On Investment (ROI) and overall solution costs, including live, 24/7/365 support and other extras that we provide free, but that our competitors charge for (like credit card best practices, assisting with merchant set ups, etc.), $ $ $ ON THE NET is usually less expensive in initial setup and total costs. In fact, when you factor in all the savings $ $ $ ON THE NET provides, merchants often save more money than it costs. If your customers are having concerns about cost, please contact our sales team.

ENSURING SECURITY

As some of you may know, your customers' legacy MICROS systems are not fully compliant with the card associations' regulations. Instead of having your customers invest a vast amount of time, money and resources to replace their systems, Shift4 has released secure versions of the MICROS 3700 and 8700 point-of-sale payment drivers that are compliant with the Payment Applications Best Practices (PABP).