Security expert Brian Krebs recently published a blog outlining some of the tactics that thieves use to commit tax fraud, and being that the deadline to file just passed, it seemed like a good time to talk about what can happen when you procrastinate.

Tax fraud is a frightening prospect. Thieves impersonate their victims and file in their name in order to collect returns that don’t belong to them, and in a lot of cases can make out with a lot of money. Not only are they able to steal the victim’s tax refund, but they create a huge headache for the person they targeted.

Fraudsters will obtain employee identification numbers (EINs), which, while not private information by any means, are still quite valuable. These EIDs are used to create bogus refund claims which are often loaded onto a prepaid card. These prepaid cards are widely used by thieves because they’re not easy to trace, and make it easy for the fraudsters to avoid banks or places that may pick up on their suspicious behavior. And how exactly are they filing these fake claims? You may or may not be surprised to learn that most of tax fraud is conducted with TurboTax, who has been under recent scrutiny for their seemingly lax fraud detection.

So, what is the best thing that you can do next year to ensure you don’t become a victim? It’s quite simple–file early. Tax fraud is getting harder for thieves to get away with each year, but its complexities mean there are plenty of loopholes for them to find. The safest thing you can do is to put in for your return before fraudsters have a chance to.

Read more about how to deal with becoming a tax fraud victim and learn what else you can do to protect yourself over on Krebs on Security.

We are excited to announce yet another Merchant Center release! Here’s a look at some of our new features:

We also have a few additions to the Marketplace that we know you’re going to want to check out.

Account Updater

The hassle of expired and replaced cards are a thing of the past with the Account Updater. Whenever a new card is assigned to your customer, the card information will automatically update on your end.

Learn more

PIN-less Debit

Accept PIN-less debit card transactions with ease for lower interchange rates, faster checkout, and more. Available to customers with access to both the Gateway and the Virtual Terminal.

Learn more

 

EMV Upgrade

The EMV deadline is set for October of this year, and all merchants must be capable of accepted EMV-cards. That’s why CardConnect supports hundreds of EMV-ready devices for all of your payment processing needs.

Learn More

Quickbooks

 Our native integration for Quickbooks allows card-present and card-not-present transactions within the Quickbooks application for customers of both our Gateway and Virtual Terminal

Learn More

Recently, mobile payment security has been a bit of a hot button issue. Between concerns about Apple Pay’s desire to “keep it simple” and criticism about NFC (near field communication) technology in general, it seems like everyone in the payments sphere has mobile on the mind. With Apple Pay specifically, some experts have expressed concern about the technology’s simplicity making it less secure—right now, 6% of Apple Pay purchases are made with stolen cards. Naturally, this is giving merchants and customers alike some pause. Apple Pay seems to be giving criminals another way of using cards they have already stolen since it’s fairly simple to load a new card into Apple Pay.

That said, mobile technologies like Apple Pay are generally much harder to hack. The real issues have come from the implementation rather than the technologies themselves. The stolen cards being used with Apple Pay were stolen through other means—Apple Pay has simply become the method of use, much like when someone steals a physical card and then uses it to place an online purchase.

What is comes down to is not whether or not NFC technology is secure, but whether or not the product using NFC is secure. Apple Pay is secured with tokenization, meaning that all stored information is useless to criminals if they manage to steal it. Despite any criticism Apple Pay may have received recently, Visa has stated that they believe tokenization technology itself is actually making consumers more comfortable with mobile payments. Statements like this from major credit card companies have inspired companies like Samsung to adopt the technology for themselves in their own mobile payment products.

We’re happy to see the public coming around to the notion that tokenization is the future of security for card payments. The belief that all transactions should be tokenized at the point of entry is one we’ve held for quite some time—that’s why every payment flowing through the CardConnect gateway is encrypted and tokenized using our patented CardSecure solution.

With so much pessimism surrounding the security of the current payments ecosystem, we’re actually quite optimistic about the powerful combination of EMV, P2PE and tokenization. These technologies are available to any business that wants to employ them, and they would have thwarted the recent spate of payment card breaches. The biggest question that remains is one of adoption and how it can be fast tracked.

Last week we introduced you to our new recurring billing feature and gave you a quick walk-through. This week we’d like to tell you a bit more about the benefits of recurring billing as well as explain some more about the functionality.

Mark as Paid

This feature provides flexibility, particularly when you are first signing up a customer for a recurring billing cycle. For example, if the customer has previously paid for a scheduled payment (say, with cash or from a previous transaction), you can go into, you can go into their billing plan and click “Mark as Paid” to ensure they’re not charged twice. This is also useful if a customer opts to submit several scheduled payments at once.

Billing Interval Flexibility

Whether daily, weekly, monthly, or annually, you’re in full control of when your customers get billed. Once a week house cleaning every Monday, daily dog walking, personal training every 10 days, monthly magazine subscriptions—you name it. You can also determine if you want to bill your customer infinitely (meaning you would need to manually cancel), based on the amount of payments, or based on an end date.

Edit Bill Plan Details

If a customer’s card expires or they simply want to be billed on a different card, there’s no need to create an entirely new account. Just go into “Bill Plan Details”, click “Add New Card” and enter the card information.

Mobile

That’s right, you can sign up your customers for recurring billing on your mobile device! This is an excellent option if your company is a subscription service and you’re doing sales at a conference, door-to-door, or any time you’re face to face. Instead of inputting your customers bill plan information later from your computer, you can get them all set up right on the spot.

Recurring billing is available to all of our merchants that use our Virtual Terminal. Learn more about all of our Virtual Terminal offerings here.

CardConnect is excited to announce new features and enhancements for the Merchant Center!

Recurring billing made simple

Finally, it’s easy to create billing plans in intervals of days, weeks, months and years. You can also base your billing plan on cancellation, date, or number of payments. We’ve also included a new option to email receipts to your customers!

Order new hardware hassle-free

Need a new swiper? An additional POS system? A key pad for phone orders? No problem! Order them directly from the Merchant Center and we’ll have them at your door ASAP.

Kount, 3-D Secure, and DonorPro are here!

Kount: Utilize Kount’s proprietary persona technology to stop fraud in its tracks before you risk authorizing an illegal purchase. Plus, manual behavior reviews add an extra level of security your customers will appreciate.

3-D Secure: Further reduce your interchange rate and remove the burden of fraud responsibility from your company’s shoulders when you integrate 3-D Secure.

DonorPro: Non-profits can accept donations secure and increase their gifts by about 10x the nation average with DonorPro’s unique CRM.

Dashboard refresh

We’ve simplified the batch process and given the dashboard an enhanced, simplified design that updates after every settlement window. View funding trends from the past 5 days, and enjoy a greater emphasis on alerts so you never miss a thing.

New VT features

Add surcharges (percentages of the total) to any transaction, or disable PAN entry to ensure that your system only ever receives tokens—keeping your system completely outside the scope of PCI compliance

Enhanced chargeback reporting

We’ve tied chargebacks to their individual transactions to allow for greater transparency.

Added user permission

Users can now be granted permissions for “Verify”, “Authorize Only”, and “Billing Plans” to give you greater control over what your users can and cannot access.

Receipt signature line

Questions about the new Merchant Center enchancements? Drop us a line at info@cardcw.com and we’ll be in touch.

Oracle E-Business Suite is an incredible tool for businesses, but with all of its complexities come room for error–especially when upgrading. Upgrades are inevitable, whether its to meet regulatory requirements, restructuring, or an evolving business practice. Regardless of the reason, it’s important to devote time to maintenance, documentation and optimization when undergoing an upgrade.

On February 26th we’re teaming up with Biztech for a webinar to help you have the smoothest upgrade possible while avoiding the five most common pitfalls of an Oracle EBS upgrade:

1. Unrealistic budgets and timelines
2. Overly complex solutions + poor documentation
3. Lack of the right resources
4. Not understanding drivers for change
5. Not understanding implementation adoption options

Join Biztech and CardConnect’s own Dave Kilgallon as we go over each pitfall and explain the best way to avoid them.

CardConnect is happy to announce our latest plugin addition—shopping carts!

These simple to install plugins make it easy to give your customers a seamless and secure e-commerce experience. CardConnect has always offered solutions for card-not-present transactions, but shopping carts add new levels of customization and come with their own unique features. Combined with the unmatched security of CardSecure, your customers’ online shopping experience will be taken to new heights.

You’ll be given two options for how you’d like to set up your shopping cart of choice—a hosted payment page or a Token Post.

The hosted payment page is a fully white-labeled and customizable page hosted by CardConnect for those that would rather keep their e-commerce activity off their server.

Hosted payment page

The Token Post ensures you maintain all of your web traffic and allows you to process payments securely on your own site without any card data ever touching your system.

Magento checkout example (Token Post)

Want to learn more about our currently integrated shopping carts? Click the logos below for more information. Then when you’re ready to give one a test drive, fill out the form here.

We are proud to introduce our latest in payment technology—CardConnect Mobile. Flowing through the CardConnect Gateway and integrated with our Merchant Center, this easy-to-use card swiper connects with the CardConnect Mobile app on iOS and Android devices. Now you can accept payments anywhere you go, then view full reconciliation details in our Merchant Center from your mobile device.

Access everything from anywhere

With CardConnect Mobile, your smartphone becomes your portal to your business. Turn your phone camera into a barcode scanner and make checkout a breeze. Manage your inventory by adding, modifying, and deleting items through your mobile device. Customize your receipts by adding your logo, social media accounts, or a custom message. Capture digital signatures right from your device screen. Plus, fully integrated reconciliation means you have instant access to everything you need to manage your business.

Merchant Center integration

When you process a payment using CardConnect Mobile, that transaction is immediately accessible in our Merchant Center. You can then use our Merchant Center to manage those transactions, such as running voids or refunds. You’ll also have access to extensive reports which include full reconciliation details all the way from authorization to funding.

The same low rates

CardConnect’s Interchange Optimization process will ensure that each and every transaction gets the best possible rate. Whether you’re swiping a card or entering data manually, you can rest assured you won’t be charged a penny more than you need to be.

Advanced, enterprise-level security

CardConnect Mobile’s card reader features cipher-block chaining encryption. This advanced technology provides robust data protection so you can feel confident that your customer’s card data is safe and sound.

24/7 support

When you own your own business, your work day doesn’t end at 5–and neither does ours. Our support staff is available 24/7/365 to assist you.

Learn more about CardConnect Mobile here.

Today, we are deploying many exciting enhancements to the Merchant Center. Here’s a look at all the new features that are included in the release.

As you likely know, access to our Merchant Center is complimentary to all CardConnect clients. This access allows for basic reporting on transactions and viewing of all processing statements.

Our new Marketplace is similar to Apple and Android’s app stores, an area where you can easily register for add-on services as they become available. On Monday, these services will include:

CardConnect Products
Three products offered directly by CardConnect.

CardConnect Gateway + Virtual Terminal: a powerful Virtual Terminal that turns your computer into a payment processing terminal. Bundled in this service is a connection to the CardConnect Gateway. This allows access to our API library, along with the connection needed to use any of our integrated solutions.

CardConnect Mobile: a new mobile swipe device and app for iOS and Android devices.

CardConnect ACH: provides the ability to accept eChecks using the CardConnect Virtual Terminal.

Shopping Cart and Accounting Plugins
Six new plugins that connect your CardConnect Gateway and processing account to popular business applications.

Point-of-Sale (POS)
POS offerings from two of our partners.

Instore: this robust iPad-based POS solution is ideal for quick-service businesses and is natively integrated with your CardConnect processing account.

Clover: a beautiful POS system available to any CardConnect client.

Another new tab you’ll find in the Merchant Center. My Account provides administrative capabilities for the CardConnect Gateway + Virtual Terminal, CardConnect Mobile, and CardConnect ACH.

You can add new services, along with seeing which products are activated for each of your merchant accounts (aka MIDs). This section also provides the ability for CardConnect Mobile users to modify profile accounts and order additional swipe devices.

Various improvements have been made to the Virtual Terminal. The biggest ones include the ability to run partial refunds and partial captures, along with force credits. If you accept eChecks, our Virtual Terminal now supports multiple ACH accounts in one environment – helpful for multi–location businesses.

A few improvements can be found with our e-mail receipts. You can now customize the subject line of a receipt, and we also have an option to automatically send a receipt any time an email is included with a transaction.

When you log into the Merchant Center, you’re probably aware of the alert notification section in your dashboard. Now you will see a few new alert types, such as transaction declined and transaction rejected. You can also close alerts you no longer wish to see, and configure which types of alerts show in your dashboard.

Thanks for checking out all the details of this release – we’re excited for it, and hope you enjoy the new features.

The Merchant Center is getting a little makeover this week with some great new features we’re excited to roll out!

ACH/eCheck processing

Out of all the changes to the Merchant Center, we’re probably the most excited about adding ACH/eCheck processing to our Virtual Terminal. Benefits of accepting eChecks include fraud protection, much faster processing, and the ability to accept out of state/international checks. eChecks are processed through the Automated Clearing House (ACH) Network, and cannot be forged so they are more secure than paper checks. They also process in one to two business days unlike traditional checks.

Learn more about eChecks here.

Faster performance and other enhancements

Enhancement-wise, we merged “Authorizations” and “Settlements” into one tab, as well as adding a “Custom” tab to allow merchants to create their own custom reports. There are also several new fields including “Method” (keyed or swiped), “Process source” (via VT, API, HPP, etc), “PINless”, and more.

We’ve also simplified the design of the Virtual Terminal while making it mobile-friendly. You will also experience faster performance when switching between payment methods.

For more information on this release, here’s a look at everything new in Merchant Center v1.3.

Questions about the Merchant Center? Drop us a line and we’ll be in touch.