National Merchants Association
Payment Processing Done Right

The payments ecosystem is evolving rapidly, and it can be daunting to keep up with it while running a business. When it comes to payment processing, there are several facets that a firm has to deal with, right from acceptance of payment cards, whether it is credit or debit, to being compliant with the rules and regulations of the payment industry. As such, it becomes more critical for businesses to revolutionize their payment processing space by creating a frictionless customer experience.

However, many businesses today are oblivious of how small and medium-sized businesses operate, the challenges they encounter with payment technologies, and the complexities and costs they come across in complying with payment card industry standards such as PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), let alone Treasury Department regulations. This is where National Merchants Association (NMA) is turning the tides by being a valued partner and advocate in merchant services.

Nevada-based NMA is a renowned industry leader and famed global advocate for merchants and the payments field at large and stands behind its distinctive motto, ‘We Work for You.’ NMA helps businesses minimize unnecessary and excessive fees associated with accepting electronic transactions and offers products and services that will help them stay afloat. “NMA’s technology base is focused on niche issues to enable our merchants to be cost-effective. Our all-encompassing niche products extend to managing chargebacks and expeditiously handle requests for copies and additional support items that our merchants need and are typically invoiced at a price that is metered,” mentions Wayne Rusk, CFO of NMA.

NMA’s in-house customer service and underwriting teams work closely to ensure that the merchant is comfortable with the initial setup—it helps the merchant select the best point-of-sale device and software combination to achieve the highest level of compliance, not only among card brands but also with PCI compliance. In the initial phase, NMA enables its customers to study the suitable payment processing solution to set them up in their exact business; whether it is a brick and mortar, or an e-Commerce space, the company ensures that its customers will be qualified through the most secure transactions. This, in turn, empowers customers to achieve optimum interchange rates and avoid the pass-through charges that card companies and payment processors try to levy.

NMA has also designed a simple pricing structure and offers 90 days of free payment processing, which allows it to double-check if the primary setup with a merchant is satisfactory.

The company has been at the top when it comes to lending a hand to its customers. One challenge that NMA’s merchant base encountered during COVID-19 was being inundated with excessive chargebacks. This resulted in substantial losses for the merchants because they could not respond to these chargebacks in a timely fashion to defend their position. With a partnered sophisticated chargeback management system, NMA could get rid of the issue. The chargeback management system, Fraud Wrangler, employs a powerful artificial intelligence/machine learning-based decisioning engine embedded in the processing environment. With this, NMA’s merchants can quickly get an electronic fee emerging from a settlement process, which details all the chargebacks for a specific day. It also backtracks and finds the original authorization, collects records, builds a summary of information and electronic responses, and permits its merchants to respond more quickly. The tool drastically eliminates the extreme level of labor involved, condenses the chargeback time, and keeps it in an electronic format that is updated for any card brand association changes and dispute information.

NMA’s technology base is focused on niche issues to enable our merchants to be cost-effective

NMA is currently working on three other technology developments to offer merchants greater performance, throughput, and enhanced security. It is also eyeing to expand an omnichannel sales distribution, where it will be looking for new agents in different verticals with different risk profiles of their portfolio. Further, NMA is working with the existing agents to incentivize them to diversify its portfolio. “As specialists working alongside high-risk merchants, we are trying to span new verticals with different risk profiles to get a diverse balance in the arena. We want to start growing where the development margin is against different risk profile merchant bases,” concludes Wayne.