Outdated Credit Card Processing May Be Bad for Business

Time warps are great in science fiction novels. Or if they feature Tim Curry. But when it comes to your business, you don’t want to be working with decades-old technology. In today’s blog, we’re going to take a look at how an outdated credit card processing system negatively impacts your business—and how you can remedy this. 

Outdated Credit Card Processing Affects Security 

One of the biggest issues with traditional payment terminals is security. Outdated payment processing systems are especially susceptible to fraud. This is because: 

• Terminals lack data encryption 
• Terminals don’t provide secure, cloud-based storage 
• Magnetic stripe cards are easy to counterfeit 

These security concerns gave rise to EMV technology which, according to Visa, has helped to reduce counterfeit fraud by 76%. EMV technology (a.k.a. chip technology) was created by EuroPay, MasterCard, and Visa (hence the acronym). 

Also according to Visa, more than 75% of storefronts are now accepting EMV chip cards. Part of it is out of concern for customers. Part of it is because since 2015, businesses have been held accountable for fraudulent activity. 

That was the year the card associations came together and decided that in order to get businesses to implement EMV-compliant technology, they were going to stop eating the cost of fraud. In other words, the costs associated with fraudulent activity now fall on a business. 

With that in mind, you can see how an outdated credit card processing puts your customers and your bottom line at risk. 

With Old Credit Card Processing Methods, You Lose Time & Money

In addition to leaving you vulnerable to fraud, outdated credit card readers: 

• Cause you to waste time crunching numbers manually and gathering information for transaction reports 
• Are susceptible to technical issues 
• Don’t batch automatically, causing you to wait an extra day to receive funds because you didn’t make the cutoff time

Additionally, older payment processors aren’t designed to process hundreds of transactions per day. As a result, they suffer from glitches and technical issues that can take days to fix. 

It’s no secret that outdated technology costs businesses more than it saves. In fact, by clinging to old credit card processing methods, you decrease productivity. A significant amount of time has to be spent on manual operations—from bookkeeping and batching to verifying deposits. There’s no single dashboard where you can keep tabs on customer transactions. 

*Learn why you should never, ever rent a terminal from credit card processing companies.

What If My Business Doesn’t Accept Credit Cards? 

What’s worse than outdated credit card processing? Not accepting credit cards at all. In fact, according to JP Morgan and Forrester, 73% of customers say the type of payment a business accepts will determine whether or not they make a purchase from that business.

In other words, if your business is only accepting cash and checks, you’re missing out on business.

We live in an age where almost anything we want is at our fingertips. We make choices based on what’s convenient. We stream instead of watch cable, use delivery apps instead of going out to pick up food. We pay with card instead of cash.

If you’re going to meet customers where they are, that means you must have a simple and secure credit card processing system in place. 

Want to accept payments but aren’t sure where to start? We’re offering a free fact sheet about payment processing. At a glance, you can discover how exactly payment processing processing works and what it can do for your business.