Cashiering, Tax Payment, Court Management, Parks & Recreation Management and
Utility Billing Software Providers

You may be approached by your customers to implement credit card acceptance on your cashiering, tax payment, court management, parks and recreation management or utility billing products. They may also be asking that it be a convenience fee solution so that they can accept credit cards in their offices at no cost. Before you embark on a path to partner with a payment solutions provider there are two important issues you need to understand.

PCI Compliance

Any software solution that has payment processing directly integrated is now subject to Payment Application Data Security Standards (PA-DSS). PA-DSS is the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Council -managed program formerly under the supervision of the Visa Inc. known as the Payment Application Best Practices (PABP). The goal of PA-DSS is to help software vendors and others develop secure payment applications that do not store prohibited data, such as full magnetic stripe, CVV2 or PIN data, and ensure their payment applications support compliance with the PCI DSS. Payment applications that are sold, distributed or licensed to third parties are subject to the PA-DSS requirements and certification.

A huge issue in PA-DSS certification requirements is that any time a change in the code of the application, that has the payment processing integrated, is made, the application has to be recertified. Certifications range from $10,000 - $25,000/certification. Since most software companies are continuously changing their code, this becomes an unfeasible option.

Our API is web based and because we are a Certified Level 1 PCI-DSS Service Provider you do not have to worry or spend any money on PCI compliance when you integrate with us.

Visa Tax Payment Program Compliance

For tax payment software and cashiering solutions where taxes are paid, the convenience fee must be automatically calculated prior to authorization and submitted and processed as a separate transaction to be in compliance with Visa rules. In addition Visa requires a special convenience fee rate on their consumer debit cards not to exceed $3.95. Percentage based fees on Visa consumer debit cards or fixed rate fees greater than $3.95 are prohibited as of October of last year.

These two requirements in particular are REQUIRED for your customers to participate in Visa's Tax Payment Program effective October 2008. Any Town City or County that wants to assess a fee back on credit card transactions, regardless of whether it is online, over the phone, in the mail or in person must meet these requirements and must be registered with Visa as of October 4, 2008 or they will be non-compliant with Visa operating rules and could be terminated from processing Visa transactions and/or fined.

Our solution has the Visa Bank Identification Number (BIN) database integrated into our payment servers so that Visa consumer debit cards are automatically identified on tax transactions and the $3.95 fee is automatically substituted and we send the convenience fee and the taxes or fees being collected as simultaneously and separate transactions in compliance with the Visa Tax Payment Program.

We provide sample code and support for these integrations. In most cases, integration can be completed in just a couple of days.