Process Payment By Touch Tone Phone

[winxmaster]

I travel quite a bit to sales shows and don’t always have access to the internet, for a virtual terminal, or a land phone line to plug credit card processing equipment into (wireless card processors way too expensive).

I have seen companies that let you process your credit card transactions on the spot completely over a touch tone phone either by cell or land line. This seems like the perfect solution for me.

Any info or thoughts on this type of processing? Any ideas on good providers?

PS: Very happy I found this site! Will pass it along to the others at the shows.

[stymiee]

This type of processing is definitely possible. It's usually called Touch tone processing but is also known as ARU. It tends to cost more then using a credit card terminal but not too much more. The only real catch to it is that you must get an imprint of every card your process to verify you really had the card present at the time of sale. Otherwise there's nothing different about it then a regular merchant account. You shouldn't have a hard time finding someone who offers it if you shop around (which is what you should be doing anyway).

[winxmaster]

You post "The only real catch to it is that you must get an imprint of every card your process to verify you really had the card present at the time of sale".

Is this a legal requirement or just a good idea? The sites that I have checked so far say that their touch tone processing service is good for phone orders, e-mail orders, and vendor cart point of sale orders, online form orders and actually any sale that involves a credit card.

If you take an order over the phone or an e-mail order and process the credit card using a virtual terminal or manually keying in the card numbers using a wireless or land line card processor, you are never able to get an imprint of a card.

I guess with an e-mail order you have the e-mail as proof but with an over the phone order you have no proof at all. For the phone order even phone records will only show a call and no proof of a sale.

So I really need to know if an imprint is required by law or just good to have in case of a charge dispute. If I don't need the imprint I will also be able to use touch tone processing for on the road phone orders (which I often have the chance to get but now pass up. If I need an imprint then I won't be able to take these phone orders).

Thanks

[winxmaster]

Anybody home?

[stymiee]

Sorry, I missed your last post.

When doing touch tone orders you will be hard pressed to find a real merchant account provider who won't require an imprint for those transactions. Without imprints of those transactions you will lose [b][u][i]every[/i][/u][/b] chargeback you get. So even if they are not required you'd be insane not to get them.

Touch tone processing is only for merchants who cannot do electronic processing under normal circumstances. This includes trade shows and fairs where you do not have access to electricity. All transactions that can be processed electronically MUST be processed electronically. If you are taking an order over the phone you don't need a touch tone account as you have access to a phone line and electricity so you can process the transaction electronically. Internet sales obviously mean the merchant can process the sale electronically so touch tone accounts are absolutely ruled out for those. Plus touch tone processing cannot ever be used for Internet transactions because they require ECI and PCI compliance which touch tone sales cannot do.