Visa’s International Service Assessment Fee Policies

Visa’s International Service Assessment Fees is one of many assessment fees that Visa charges to assess the increased risks of foreign transactions. The ISA fee only applies when the US-based businesses accept a Visa card issued by a non-US bank.

ISA (International Service Assessment)

The ISA fee applies to all the transactions involving US-based business and a foreign card issuer. Current Visa’s ISA fee is 0.80%. It is a merged fee of the standard assessment fee (0.13%) and the international acquirer fee (0.45%). The Transaction would incur 1.38% in assessment fees. This amount is in addition to the costs of interchange and the processor’s markup.

Most businesses want to pay as less as possible for credit card processing, but let’s get this straight that most of the people usually are not aware if they are getting competitive markup or not. If you want to cut down the costs on the credit card processing, you’ll have to make sure you get competitive markup if not, you’re paying more than you should.

Visa Assessment Fees:

Assessment fees are the methods by which Visa makes money. For example, when you take a Visa card at your business, the transaction incurs assessment fees from Visa, which your credit card processor passes to you. Assessment fees are non-fluctuating for processors; they are not even negotiated with Visa for individual businesses. However, there have been examples of processors tampering with assessment charges. They were adding different types of charges without disclosing it to businesses. Indeed, a payment processor was sued for that practice. Ideally, you’ll work with a processor that passes assessments to you at a cost. We, at Merchant Stronghold, have a legal agreement with acquirers that stipulates the processor to pass charges to you at the right cost. Furthermore, we monitor the statements to ensure clients are billed correctly.

Who pays the ISA?

This comes in brutal because from a merchant’s point of view it might seem fair that customer must pay this additional processing cost. But, since Visa has no way to bill you directly for the ISA fee, they charge it to your processor, and the processor will pass the cost in the monthly account statement.

The Technological advancements have broken down many barriers that previously limited international commerce. In this age of Information, transactions between US-based merchants and international financial institutions are becoming more common, and this trend will only continue to grow in the future. Extra fees for processing card transactions across national borders are, unfortunately, probably here to stay.

Getting Cheapest Payment Gateway Is Not Good For Your Business

Cheapest Payment Gateway – Today there are so many options available to choose for payments; bank transactions, credit/debit card payments for your business. It can become very difficult to choose from the options available. However, the truth is not all payment gateways are reliable for your business. If you are a merchant who is setting up a new business and will be dealing with daily transactions then it is very important for you to have full knowledge of the suitable payment gateway for your business. There are a lot of points to consider while choosing the right payment gateway.

You might find a “cheaper” payment services provider, but there could be hidden charges too. You might choose a cheaper payment gateway, but choosing the cheapest one is not always the best option.

WHY THE CHEAPEST PAYMENT GATEWAY IS NOT THE BEST ONE FOR YOUR BUSINESS?

Cheapest payment gateway does not always deliver as they promise. They use different tactics to entice merchants. These could be very problematic for the health and reputation of your company.

Cheap Payment Gateway usually puts attractive advertisements with lowest pricing rates and other services to attract potential clients, but there come hidden fees with it.

If you want to expand your business and sell your products and services globally, some payment gateways will charge higher fees when you sell in other currencies.

Cheapest payment service providers may give you a headache due to lack of proper secure payment service. However, with the best payment gateways, you will not have to worry about PCI compliance, anti-fraud tools, and security issues.

The cheapest payment gateway cannot be an outstanding service provider. If some fraudulent transaction or something unexpected happens, they will fail to resolve your problem quickly or they may charge a very high fee for the assistance with it.

Most payment service providers hold your credit card data hostage. For example, you have several thousands of credit card details of customers that you may not be able to transfer. Now, in case you want to switch to other payment providers, you might not have the option of retrieving this data and take with you. In that case, you will have to ask all these customers to fill their information again and could cost you a lot of money in attrition and in the process you might lose the trust of your customers.

Cheapest payment gateway offers only one or two payment services, requiring you to hire your own vendors, maintain multiple relationships with other online security providers.

Hence, for the security and growth of your business, choose the “right” payment gateway instead of the “cheapest” payment gateway.

In case you want to know more, you can always get in touch with Merchant Stronghold. You can contact us through email or phone number +1 (888) 622 – 6875and talk to our experts at any time of the day.