MERCHANT ACCOUNT ANALYSIS

Essentially both of these terms refer to the same thing. Typically when a merchant batches out or closes out the transactions for a certain day of sales, the processing bank places those funds on hold for one or two additional days as a precaution against potentially fraudulent charges, charge backs, etc. Then the funds are released and move through the processing bank to the merchant’s bank. This means that it can take 2-3 days for the merchant to receive the money from credit card sales on a particular day. Now consider the term Zero Day Hold. This means that the processor releases the funds right away so the merchant can receive the funds the next day or the day after depending on when they batched those funds. Please keep in mind that it takes additional time for the money to be deposited into the merchant’s bank account once the processor releases the money. (You will recall that when you deposit a personal check from a relative or someone else into your bank account, those

This is an important question in view of the fact that PCI compliance is not optional. Visa and MasterCard are requiring that processors make sure that all card holder data is secure according to certain standards. Of course making sure all merchants under a processor are compliant is costly! Each processor is working with a third party organization to provide a compliance assessment for each merchant and issue a certificate of compliance once per year. The requirements are different depending on the type and size of the business. Some businesses will cost more to secure and others less. In order to defray the expenses, all processors are spreading these costs among all their merchants adding an additional monthly or annual fee. Some are even adding a per transaction fee to help defray the expense. So if you are a merchant who thinks that you have no annual fee and no extra monthly fees, think again. If you don’t have an annual fee you will still incur an extra charge once a ye