re post# 3 by Michael, here is Chris's relpy in long form
ePassporte has elected to stop accepting MasterCard. We were not fined. We were not terminated. We were not in any fine program. We were not over any ratios. We simply decided that we could not afford to accept MasterCard at this time due to our risk management criteria.
Without going into excruciating detail, you may be interested to know that Secure Code, MasterCard’s equivalent of Verified by Visa, has proven to be ineffective, in our opinion and along with other issues related to cardholder data security, MasterCard is not an acceptable product for our company.
The Secure Code program, as you may know, gives us as a merchant, protection from chargebacks when the cardholder enters the 3 digit CAVV number from the back of their card, on our join form. This system works very well with Visa (Verified by Visa), however MasterCard’s system is returning “format error” responses on over 50% of these transactions.
We do not know if this is a MasterCard system error; however we do know that it is not an error on our part or on the part of any of our vendors. We tested and certified our file format, and in fact we get some transactions approved. Possibly this is a programmed response to avoid the financial pitfalls to MasterCard of so called “friendly fraud”.
What ever the reasons for the above, we simply can’t accept this sort of risk. Moreover, MasterCard is not a very large portion of our business. While we have tens of thousands of MasterCard cardholder’s that may no longer use their MasterCard, thus far we have seen a very large percentage of those attempting to load with MasterCard switching to Visa or ACH.
The sky is not falling here, or anywhere on ePassporte-land. The vast majority of people on this board are paid by Sponsor Programs and do not have any load cards on file.
We regret any inconvenience that this decision has caused any of our valued customers. However, we feel that ePassporte is a stronger and more stabile company because we make choices that may adversely impact our revenue, yet keep us in business for the long term.
As we approach 5 years of successful and uninterrupted operations, we would like to thank all of you that support, enjoy and use ePassporte. We will be here for the long term, regardless of what others may say.
As is our practice, we will not post any further on this issue, as our position has been explained. If you have other questions please email your ePassporte Account Rep.
Thanks.
C
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Chris Mallick
[email protected]