Merchant Account Tips for Protecting Your Restaurant's Merchant Profile

Protect your restaurant's merchant profile

As a hardworking restaurateur, you realize the importance of protecting your merchant profile to keep your merchant account fees low. US Business Finance Corp always passes on Visa's tips to our restaurant clients to educate them in how to protect their restaurant's merchant profile and improve their patrons' experience.

Traditionally restaurants add a percentage on to a credit card authorization to cover the tip. This practice, though totally allowable, has the potential to cause trouble. In today's electronic information age, patrons can check their credit card balances and statements online. If they find an authorization from your merchant credit card account for more than the amount they signed for, they tend to react in a less than understanding way. At best they call to complain at which point you can explain authorizations versus actual charges. At worst, they grumble to themselves and never return, even though their dining experience was very good. In the middle is the patron calls their credit card company to verify or dispute the amount of the charge.

A better route that VISA suggests to avoid all three scenarios is to only authorize the amount of the bill. Since VISA allows up to a 20% overcharge of the authorization, you can still charge for the tip. If the tip is less than projected in the authorization or the customer leaves their server a cash tip, you don't have to worry about the customer perceiving a higher authorization as an overcharge.

Another tip is to take the any receipt copy requests seriously. This can greatly eliminate chargeback problems and keep customers satisfied with your restaurant. Many times customers may see your corporate name appear on their statement and not connect it your restaurants DBA name. Even if the amount is small, fulfill the copy request in a timely manner and protect you merchant profile.

Finally, do a background check on your potential employees. Historically certain sectors of the restaurant trade have high turn-over rates and hiring employees can be time-consuming. But making sure you don't have a someone participating in an account information stealing set-up is very important to the security of your restaurant patrons.

US Business Finance Corp is a premier provider of merchant credit card accounts to the restaurant trade, and as part of our service we recognize the importance of helping our merchant clients by training owners and staff in the "best practices" of credit card account usage. Having your employees experienced and ready to handle your credit card transactions is your number one asset in protecting your merchant profile.