Security Practices

"Don't leave your life up to chance, grab the reigns of your life and charge gallantly in the direction of your grandest vision" --- Darren Hardy

Security Practices; a Hard Lesson Learned Firsthand

We are excited to bring you another issue of our monthly newsletter. To begin, I would like to share this story with you. The following should magnify the importance of having payment processing security practices in place at your business.

Sometime last year we received a panicked call from our friend and merchant-partner, Ben Amouna, of American Gas here in Newhall, Ca.

Ben’s bank account had suddenly been debited for over $20,000.00. Well as it turns out we hadn’t touched the account, the debit was initiated by the payment processor that they had been with before settling on ABC Processing for good.

Ben had been with us for a year or so when another processor came along and promised him better prices. Being in the midst of a recession Ben certainly could benefit if this were the case, so he signed with them.

After discovering that we have an ironclad 3 year rate guarantee policy, which enables us to match or beat any contracted offer, he immediately came back with us due to our superior level of customer service.

Apparently during the time Ben processed with the other folks there were several transactions that ended up being compromised, meaning the cardholder’s information was accessed and fraudulent transactions were generated as a result.

Although the fraudulent transactions occurred elsewhere, the compromise was traced back to the P.O.S. at Ben’s business.

What happened is that a criminal captured the cardholder’s data at Ben’s place of business, unbeknownst to anyone, and used the information to fraudulently execute a couple of purchases at several other businesses totaling over $20,000.00.

Almost a year later and without notice Ben’s account was debited overnight. This understandably left Ben angry and confused, as to his knowledge he hadn’t done anything that could result in a potentially catastrophic loss such as this.

The fact of the matter is that if a cardholder’s information is compromised and fraud is perpetrated, ultimately the merchant is financially responsible if the cardholder information was acquired in any way through the course of doing business with the merchant.

What if the scam was for a million dollars or more? A frightening thought indeed because that would be catastrophic! A very honest, prosperous and thriving business could be virtually wiped out, overnight!

Fortunately Ben was able to withstand the loss and is gallantly and successfully pursuing his dream and his business is doing well, in fact thriving.