We offer 3 different merchant accounts depending on how you will be processing payments through Cash Practice Systems.

  • RETAIL Merchant Account: This account is used to swipe credit or debit cards when you have the card physically in your hand, using the USB card swiper, EMV chip card terminal, or CP MOBILE Swiper for one-time transactions.  
  • MOTO Merchant Account: This account is used in order to get the lowest rate on credit or debit cards that are not physically swiped. This is referred to as 'credit-keyed' transactions, which include recurring auto-debits or one-time transactions when the card is not present (manually keyed in or stored in Cash Practice). 
  • EFT Merchant Account: This account is an add on to the MOTO merchant account and is used to process bank account payments using a voided check with a routing number and an account number (debit cards are not processed as an EFT, even though they debit from a checking account)

Why we offer both RETAIL & MOTO merchant accounts for processing credit cards:

 1. Per PCI DSS Compliance Regulations, it is illegal to store credit card numbers in a readable format and key enter the numbers into a retail terminal (example: using a tickler system or spreadsheet to store the full credit card numbers and then running those once a month). The MOTO merchant account allows you to safely and securely store credit card information for future payments.

 2. Even if it was legal to store credit card numbers in a readable format and key enter them into a retail terminal, it would be more expensive. All banks charge a higher fee to 'key-enter' a credit card VS swiping a card due to the risk factors involved. For example, if you were to key a transaction through our RETAIL swiper merchant account, the rate would start at 2.99%. If you processed that same transaction through our MOTO merchant account, the rate would start at 2.30%. MOTO is meant for keyed cards, therefore, the starting rate is much lower than a keyed rate on RETAIL (which is meant for swiping).

3. VISA/MasterCard do not allow more than 20% of your total transactions to be keyed in (non-swiped) on a RETAIL merchant account (remember RETAIL is meant for swiped transactions only). VISA/MasterCard can actually shut down your RETAIL merchant account if you key in more than 20% of your transactions on that merchant account.

IMPORTANT: We do not recommend that you process any keyed transactions through your Retail merchant account.  In the event that your patient initiates a chargeback from a keyed transaction on the RETAIL merchant account that used a chipped credit card and you do not have our EMV terminal - you will not be able to dispute it per the 2015 EMV Liability Shift Rules. We recommend all keyed transactions are processed through the MOTO merchant account. For questions, call 877-343-8950 x105

By using both RETAIL & MOTO merchant accounts, you are able to process payments in a compliant fashion and save the most on processing fees by running payments through the proper merchant account.

Why we offer an EFT merchant account for processing bank account payments:

1) Bank accounts don't "expire", while credit cards do. This saves your staff time of having to update expiration dates.

2) Processing fees can be cheaper. If your patient's credit cards were to have a rewards program linked to them or are business or corporate credit cards, the standard processing rates can be as high as 3.29% - 3.89%. By having your patients keep a bank account on file for one-time transactions OR monthly auto-debits, the processing rate is 1.79%, which is a big difference in fees!