Monitoring Credit Card Settlements
There are many things in both our personal and business lives that are so automated, that we rarely give any thought to them until something goes wrong… Often, this is because we are secure in the thought that we know that it has always worked, so that we don’t even entertain the idea that something should be routinely checked for success or failure,
A recent example of this is…
A retailer had been having an issue with getting proper credit Card authorizations. Because users were not able to get an authorization code through the computer software on a specific day, they used the "Force" option and inserted a bogus authorization code for a substantial number of Credit Card transactions on that day.
When a "Force" option is used, the assumption is that the transaction will ALWAYS be called in to your processor for a VALID Authorization Code that would then entered into the "Authorization Code" field. Because this was not handled properly, ALL of these transactions were preventing attempts to settle all other transactions dated from that date forward. Had any of these cards been bad or over their limit, the merchant would have most likely not been paid for them.
To compound matters, the manager that ran the Settlement process was not checking on the failure of the payment transactions to settle with the processor. Despite the fact that the process was generating a visible settlement failure message, the manager ignored the warning for over a week.
While eventually resolved, the process adversely affected the business cash flow.
The simple rules that may have been forgotten here are:
- "Even automated processes need to be manually monitored from time to time in order make sure that they are functioning properly."
- "If I get and error or warning message, I should follow-up on it ASAP"
-John
If you would like to have CCS check your systems for any anomalies, please contact the CCS Retail Systems Support Department at 800/425-672-4806.