As a business who sells directly to other businesses (B2B) or government agencies (B2G), you will find that corporate, business, purchasing and government credit cards account for, on average, 75% of your credit card payments on invoices and purchase orders.

Commercial Credit Card Types:

Business Cards: Cards that are typically issued to smaller businesses.  These are generally used as multi-purpose cards for both T&E and purchases.   Business cards are similar to consumer cards in functionality and merchant acceptance, however, requiring Level II data for “best rate” qualification.

Corporate Cards: Typically utilized by mid- to large- sized businesses.   Corporate Cards are traditionally and primarily used as T&E cards.  While there are increased interchange costs for all MCCs accepting this card type, only non T&E merchants qualify to receive Level II interchange incentives and no merchants are required to pass Level III data. However, merchants may still choose to capture Level III data in order to simplify reconciliation of accounting and other systems

Purchasing Cards: Typically issued by larger businesses to Purchasing Agents within their organization, these cards minimize the costly purchase order process and allow businesses to efficiently and quickly procure products and supplies.  Purchasing Cards always require Level II data in order to qualify for a merchant’s “best rate.”  In addition, at this time, for merchants with large tickets, there are specific interchange qualification incentives to pass Level III data.

GSA (General Services Administration) Purchasing Cards: Virtually all branches of the United States Federal Government utilize Visa Purchasing Cards.  These cards are issued exclusively by Visa and function very similar to regular Purchasing Cards, however there are special interchange requirements and rates associated with accepting GSA Purchasing Cards.   Merchants do NOT need to be registered with Visa in order to take advantage of these interchange rates.

Data Requirements Explained For Level 2 and Level 3 Processing

Level I Data – Required for all card types

• · Merchant Name
• · Transaction Amount
• · Date
• · AVS info, etc

Level II Data – Interchange incentives for Corporate and Purchasing Cards

• · All Level I data
• · Sales Tax
• · Purchase ID/Invoice #

Level III Data – Interchange incentives for GSA and Large Ticket Purchasing Cards

• · All Level I data
• · Additional line item detail such as: Item description, quantity, color, shipping/freight, etc.

Why risk the chance of your business continuing to overpay on your processing fees each month. You may be paying 1-2% higher on commercial and government credit cards than you need to be.

Tailored Transactions has a wealth of experience setting up and processing for B2B and B2G businesses like your own. We specialize in structuring merchant accounts to take full advantage of the preferred pricing that is available from Visa, MC and Discover. If you suspect that you may be overpaying, or if you are just curious to seeing if we can provide you a savings, contact us today. Our rate comparison is 100% Free and comes with No obligation to any of our services.

Call us toll free at (888).669.1686 or email us at info@tailoredtransactions.com

Tags: B2B Merchant Account, b2b merchant services, B2G Merchant Account, B2G merchant services, business credit cards, business to business, business to government, Commercial Credit Cards, Level 2 processing, Level 3 processing

This entry was posted on September 16, 2010 at 1:22 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in B2B Merchant Account B2B Merchant Services B2G Merchant Account Level 2 processing Level 3 processing by tailoredtrans 1 Comment