Fraud is an ever-present threat for c-stores and other businesses. To protect your business and community, it is crucial that employees are trained to be on the lookout for potentially fraudulent activity.

From time to time, a customer might contact you and report that you overcharged or double charged them for a purchase. While this can happen, the extra charges might actually be the result of a pre-authorization hold placed by the customer’s card issuing bank. These holds can sometimes remain on a customer’s account for several days. If you run into this scenario, please keep the following points in mind:

Over the past few years, CHS Payment Solutions has taken many measures to improve the security of Cenex® gift cards to reduce fraudulent attacks and protect our merchants and consumers. As you know, four-digit CVVs (card validation values) were added to the back of all gift cards for increased protection.

The Payment Card Settlement is a historic $5.54 billion antitrust class-action settlement that will provide some relief for millions of U.S. merchants after years of paying allegedly inflated Visa and Mastercard interchange fees.

Merchants can easily fall behind on chargeback management if books are not routinely monitored. Checking Merchant Services Online (MSOA) daily can help ensure chargebacks are being managed in a consistent manner and dispute timeframes are not missed.

The new year is upon us, and now is a good time for general managers, controllers and bookkeepers to double check all location tax information. This information can be found by logging into Merchant Services Online Access (MSOA).