BLOG POST
If you have been hesitant about selling Surcharging to your merchants, we understand. There has been so much coded language injected into the marketplace that it can be confusing and make merchants and payments providers feel uncertain. There are several ways that payments providers may try to circumvent saying “surcharging” by calling it something else. If they are unwilling to call a surcharge by it’s proper name, it may indicate that there’s something unusual happening and you’re not alone in feeling suspicious.
Surcharge is not a bad word
If your business follows the proper guidelines and stays in compliance, there’s no need to create fancy terms to obscure what you’re offering to merchants: the ability to recuperate their expenses.
Would you sell your merchants a POS that didn’t have a power cord?
If your solution asks merchants to invest in additional staff or man-hours to offset their ability to recuperate credit card fees, they may end up spending more and be dissatisfied. To build long-term trust and relationships with your merchants, you need to provide them with a complete solution that is a win-win.
Not all “compliant” solutions are equal
Some solutions limit surcharging amounts to comply with Visa regulations, but none of them also address what happens after the transaction is complete. There is little thought about GAAP compliance and the additional effort that is required to reconcile those transactions.Today, bookkeepers and accounting staff spend hours to reconcile payments and extract the surcharge amount to ensure that they are properly accounted for and follow GAAP requirements. The cost and hassle to businesses can be significant. Whether they have an in-house team or hire an outside bookkeeper, they are being forced to invest in paying for staff to handle the manual reconciliation of surcharges.
Save time AND money
Chargezoom is here to reassure you that Surcharging can be handled in a way that is 100% compliant with Visa and GAAP compliant. Let us show you how! Our solution does not require manual entry or manual updates to QuickBooks, which saves merchants both time and staff expenses. Merchants can add surcharges to eligible payments confidently and know that their books are always accurate and GAAP compliant.
Simple to enable
With Chargezoom, merchants can enable Surcharging in the platform easily and select the appropriate percentage which cannot exceed the fee that is determined by the card brand.
Only eligible cards will be surcharged
Merchants can also feel confident that every transaction is compliant with the card issuer's rules. Chargezoom performs a real-time BIN look-up for every card, every time. This means that ineligible cards, such as debit cards or prepaid cards, will never be charged a surcharge.
Surcharging across the platform
Merchants can add surcharging to all payment options within Chargezoom, including:
- Virtual terminal
- eInvoices
- Payment links
- Subscriptions
- Customer Portal
GAAP compliant Surcharging
Every payment is reconciled automatically to the accounting package (QuickBooks, FreshBooks, or Xero) following the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). In addition to capturing the full data that is necessary for GAAP compliance, Chargezoom also ensures that any surcharge amount is captured as a separate line item. This allows bookkeepers, Controllers, CFOs, and CPAs to easily identify the amounts collected via surcharging.
Chargezoom is the only surcharging solution that offers GAAP-compliant reconciliation.
Surcharge with confidence, build long-term relationships
Help your merchants feel confident that their surcharges are being handled correctly and comply with all requirements while keeping their bookkeepers happy too. Chargezoom can help merchants save time and money every day with their accounting tasks, without compromises.
