Don’t Let Declines Ruin Your Customer Experience
Source: Discover, by Erika Napoletano
Imagine being abroad on the vacation of your dreams. You’re taking in the sights and taking photos that will last a lifetime—images you’ll share with friends and family, and perhaps generations to come. You spy a café. It looks like the ideal place to take a moment to plan the rest of your day over a cup of local brew.
Your coffee comes, you plan the next adventure, and you’re ready to pay the check and be off. That is until the waiter kindly tells you that your card doesn’t seem to be going through.
While this is a fear for consumers when they travel, it should be a concern for business owners as well—because what if the problem isn’t with that customer’s card, but with the point-of-sale terminal?
In the current world economy, it’s not enough to simply say that you accept a wide array of credit and debit cards. You have to have the reliable technology and networks in place to ensure that the card transactions run properly as a way to help prevent declines.
“As people travel, plastic has become an important method for payment as they look to easily transact with businesses anywhere,” said Ricardo Leite, vice president of global acceptance, Discover Global Network. “A simple way a retailer can ensure that its terminal is ready to accept a specific payment network is to test. For example, Discover Global Network has step-by-step guides on our Website for retailers to follow, making sure our partners are taking advantage of payment opportunities from our millions of cardholders from around the world.”
For prepaid, debit and credit cards, it’s important that businesses are able to live up to signage and acceptance promises. So, as a business owner, what can you do today to increase the quality of acceptance across card types and brands?
First, review your declined or problematic transaction history through your payment processor or acquirer. Make sure you understand whether the challenges were with customer-controlled factors (such as lack of funds or available credit) or with the processor failing to complete the transaction.
Next, explore and compare payment networks and specifically inquire about their acceptance quality. In addition, ask about efforts to ensure that merchants won’t suffer lost sales because of technology challenges impacting acceptance.
Finally, make sure your payment processor or acquirer offers you the widest array of ways for your customers to pay. From in-person card transactions for prepaid, debit and credit cards to touchless purchasing tools like Apple Pay and Android Pay, the more options your payment processor or acquirer supports, the higher your acceptance quality is likely to be.
To test your terminal to ensure Discover Global Network card acceptance, please visit the Test Your Terminal page on DiscoverNetwork.com. To begin accepting Discover Global Network cards, simply contact your current acquirer, or find one from our list by visiting DiscoverNetwork.com. To let customers know that you accept their preferred method of payment, simply log into the Discover Global Network Signage Portal and get free signage, from window decals to Website/app acceptance marks, to point-of-sale terminal signage.
This article was sponsored by Discover Global Network. For more insights into consumer trends and the world of payments, visit Discover Global Network Perspectives.
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