Merchant Services

Credit Card Processing

Advanced Business Solutions offers low cost processing for all Major Credit Cards and can process on all platforms i.e., Retail, Hospitality, Mail Order/Telephone Order, E-Commerce, Mobile, and Level II and Level III Purchase Card processing.

Commercial Card and Purchase Card Processing

We specialize in Commercial Card processing, also known as Level II and Level III Data Capture. These are credit card processing programs specifically designed for businesses that accept corporate and purchase cards as payment. Utilizing these p-card programs can dramatically reduce processing fees.

Commercial Card Processing Overview

Commercial, Purchasing, Corporate, and Business cards are increasingly being presented for payment of purchase orders and invoices. MasterCard and Visa have designed processing programs specifically designed for businesses who primarily accept these cards as payment. Level II and Level III Data Processing was established to help businesses who process P-Cards lower their merchant account fees by qualifying these transactions correctly.

The credit card processing system is setup on a three level system. These levels of requirements are made to determine if a certain transaction is a qualified transaction. A qualified transaction will ensure that the business gets the lowest qualified processing rate possible. If the criteria for being qualified are not met, the transaction downgrades. When a transaction downgrades, an additional processing and/or transaction fee is also assessed on the transaction. Downgrade charges can be costly for some businesses so it is important to know what is required for a transaction to be qualified.

Level 1 and 2 transactions can be run through a standard credit card terminal or PC processing program if setup correctly. Level 3 transactions require special software to transmit the extra information required to qualify the transaction. Businesses that have many downgrades due to corporate and government card acceptance should look into a level 2 or level 3 processing solution to avoid costly downgrading.

Level I, II, III Card Data

Level I

Level I card credit data is the standard consumer credit card transaction data. Level I data includes card number and expiration date, these transactions are subject to standard interchange pricing and downgrades.

Level II

Level II corporate card data contains additional information about each transaction including sales tax and customer account data. Level II card data includes three additional variables; Purchase Order Number, Customer Code (Now Optional), and Customer Sales Tax. These transactions qualify at lower interchange rates.

Level III

Level III data (also known as Level 3 line item detail) contains more transaction details. This type of transaction data is normally used within large companies and supports back-end processing and data exchange services. In addition to Level I and Level II data, Level III data transactions include the following; Item Description, Item Quantity, Item Unit of Measure, Product Code, and Freight Amount.

This method enables the card transactions to qualify for special interchange rates the card associations have established for purchase card transactions. These are lower rates than otherwise would be charged if the transactions were processed using only Level I Data.

Level III data is also very useful to the purchasing organizations to help streamline accounting procedures and to merge payment data with electronic procurement systems.

 

At present, there are a small number of Processors that are capable of supporting Level II and Level III accounts and data. Advanced Business Solutions fully supports Level II and Level III data transactions and our business model was designed specifically to help commercial and industrial businesses qualify for these lower interchange rates.