American Credit Card Processing PIN-less Procedures

It's up to MasterCard and Visa's member banks to assist American credit card processing businesses in the understanding and implementing payment acceptance rules governing a PIN-less payment option for some debit cards. To achieve that, payment processing companies are usually willing provide training to merchants and their third-party service providers to make sure that the following best practices are properly adopted before the PIN-less point-of-sale terminal system is implemented.

Three Steps to Processing PIN-less Debit

Here is how PIN-less debit should be processed by American credit card processing merchants:

1. Offer the consumer a clear payment choice. Confusion can often occur if customers think that they are paying with one payment brand, but the transaction is in reality processed on another brand. For example, a cardholder who chooses payment by American Express should always have her selection honored. Choices such as "Debit" and "Credit" may be confusing, as they often have different meanings depending on the consumer's own understanding. The choice of a payment brand offers a clear selection to the customer. This is why it is best for American credit card processing companies to offer their customers with a menu of supported brands.
   • For e-commerce merchants, offering a menu or radio button that lists all of the supported payment brand options and enabling the customer to make a well informed choice.
   • For mail order and telephone order (MO / TO) businesses that instruct consumers to select their favorite payment method using a Voice Response Unit (VRU) or customer support agent, it allows identifying specific payment brand choices, rather than generic and confusing terms such as credit, debit, and ATM.
2. Honor the customer's selection. If the consumer indicates that she wants to pay with a Discover card, the American credit card processing merchant must make certain that her choice is honored. A retailer is allowed to advertise to the customer other types of payment, but it cannot confuse or mislead the consumer or withhold important information in the process. To put it simply, the choice ultimately belongs to the consumer. A payment can only be processed as anything other than Discover (in our example) if the consumer has chosen another method of payment.
3. Confirm the selection. To eliminate any kind of confusion about the consumer's choice of payment, retailers should provide a confirmation page or voice confirmation that states the chosen payment option (for example, Discover, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, etc).

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