Mastercard and Visa Merchant Policies

The following notes apply to merchants who accept Mastercard and VISA branded cards. As part of the merchant agreement, these clauses are designed to avoid punishing a card holder for using their card, or to avoid obeying terms designed to reduce card fraud.

• Minimums and Maximums-Always accept credit cards regardless of the dollar amount of the purchase. Imposing minimum or maximum purchase amounts is a violation.



• Surcharging -Always treat credit card transactions like and other transaction. You many not impose any surcharge on credit card transactions. Merchants may offer a discount for cash transactions, provided that the offer is clearly disclosed to customers and the cash price is presented as a discount from the standard price charged for all other forms of payment.



• Taxes- Include any required taxes in the total transaction amount. Do not collect taxes separately in cash.



• Split Sales – Prepare one sales receipt per transaction, using the full transaction amount. Merchants are not allowed to split the cost of a single transaction between two or more sales receipts in order to avoid authorization limits.



• Laundering- Deposit transactions only for your own business. Depositing transactions for a business that does not have a valid merchant agreement is called laundering or factoring.



• Cash refunds- Use the terminal to return a transaction back to the cardholder. Do not provide cash refunds for returned merchandise originally purchased with a credit card.



• Refunds- When refunding a credit card transaction be sure to return the transaction to the same card it was charged to. Not doing so can result in potential defraud for the merchant.



• When dealing with Debit transactions, the customer must be allowed to enter thier own pin number.