Since the introduction of credit cards in the 1960s, cards have carried the card number, expiration date, and cardholder’s name in raised or embossed letters on the plastic surface of the card. . Mechanical devices were developed and used to print credit card charge slips from these raised alphanumeric characters. Those receipts were then, over many years, deposited into the merchant’s bank account as checks to show that the transaction took place. More recently, cards have been magnetically striped and swiped through electronic devices that read and transmit card information to processing centers for verification and sale authorization.

Electronic processing has now become so standardized that last year Visa announced that it would phase out the stamping of card information on the surface of the card and that future cards will be “flat”, card information will be printed but it will only be magnetically accessible with the strip on the back. . Other card associations, MasterCard and the rest, will follow shortly.

Few merchants still manually take card imprints, with the exception of merchants that accept card payments for the delivery of goods or services ordered over the phone, like a pizzeria, for example. They do this to verify that the physical card was presented to the merchant during the transaction, in order to prevent fraudulent chargebacks.

In my own wallet I have an ePassporte Visa Electron card and the numbers are flat. No impression can be taken.

And it is no longer necessary to take any impressions. The new standard is to always swipe the card through a terminal, whether the terminal is in the store, next to the register or in the point of sale system or is part of it, or through the use of a terminal wireless that the driver brings with him to the customer. for payment at the time of delivery.

If your business accepts phone or mail orders and you manually enter credit card numbers into your terminal, you’re costing yourself a lot of money in additional card processing fees. Manually entered transactions are processed as “non-qualified” transactions at a rate of more than double their base rate, due to the risk of fraud due to the lack of physical presence of the card.

The fact is, card imprints are no longer a protection against fraud, because any criminal can create fake credit cards and use an Addressograph machine to engrave stolen credit card numbers on them. However, the encoding of a magnetic stripe on the back is almost impossible to counterfeit. The strip contains not only the card number, but also other codes that, when swiped through a terminal, verify to the bank that the actual card is present and that it is being swiped, not manually typed.

What can a trader do?

Aside from buying some sort of portable copier to copy the customer’s card and perhaps ID, all you can do is get up to speed with 21st century technology and equip your drivers or delivery staff with wireless card terminals. credit. The terminals can be purchased or leased through your credit card processor and pay for themselves quickly, because now all the transactions they process will be done at a lower fee, just like card-present transactions.

These terminals include a printer so you can get a signed receipt from the customer after the transaction has been completed and authorized, and print a second copy of the receipt for the customer. As if the customer had been physically in your store.

I have equipped many mobile merchants with these devices: food delivery, locksmiths, massage therapists, IT technicians, handymen, plumbers and other repair personnel; the list grows every day as more businesses go mobile and deliver their goods and services to customers. The terminals are also ideal for trade shows, shows, conventions and other places without landline access available.