A fee for the statement of processing activity and charges mailed by the bank after the last day of each month the account is active. Usually billed at $10.00 per month.

The minimum amount of discount fees charged by a processing bank in a given month. If account activity does not generate the monthly minimum, the merchant pays the difference. Example: Most banks in the US charge a $25.00 monthly minimum. If you have a $100.00 sale, and you are paying a 2.5% discount rate, the

A discount rate that is billed in addition to the “Qualified” discount rate, usually for these reasons: (A) with a “retail” merchant account, where the transaction is keyed instead of swiped, or (B) transactions on a specialty credit card like a business or rewards credit card. The discount rate for this transaction is higher than

Member Alert To Control High Risk Merchants or MATCH for short is an electronic bulletin board used to track people and businesses whose merchant processing accounts are reported “terminated” by acquiring banks. This is also commonly referred to as the TMF list, which is a “black-listing” of merchants if they have a merchant account terminated

A transaction is “keyed” when the information from a credit card is manually typed into a terminal or computer. Keyed transactions pay higher rates than “swiped” transactions, as the card associations know that higher incidences of fraud and chargebacks occur on card not present transactions (if the card is present, it should be swiped to

A Merchant Account is a relationship between a retailing company and a processor, and specifically in this case allows the retailer to accept credit card payments from customers via the Internet.

This acronym refers to an organization who has contracted to sell merchant processing services.

The now old fashioned manual, slide type device used to produce an image of the raised (embossed) characters on a credit card, to a transaction slip. All merchants should have a manual imprinter for cases that demand a physical imprint or as a ‘back-up’ if your telephone line is out of service. These imprinters are

Merchant accounts in the US are almost always personally guaranteed. Guarantor agrees to personally guarantee (make good on) any processing losses a processing bank incurs as a result of the business relationship with this merchant. Generally (a few exceptions apply), the only accounts that can be approved WITHOUT a guarantor, are non-profits and publicly traded

Cards issued with a Visa/MC/Discover/AmEx logo, with a fixed limit based on the deposit made to open the account. AVS is not able to be used on gift cards unless the customer registers their address with the bank that issued the gift card.