Cloudbeds Payments - Best Practices in Accepting Credit Cards

Combat fraudulent transactions and prevent chargebacks by using your credit card terminal and accepting EMV (aka chip acceptance). It may be convenient to process transactions with credit card data included in the reservations but we recommend to use your terminal as much as you can. 

Never wire money via a third-party at your customer's request or process a credit card transaction in exchange for cash. If something doesn’t feel right about the interaction, don't complete the transaction with the cardholder.

If you ever have any questions about a transaction, email us at support@cloudbeds.com.

Your Doing Business As (DBA) is the name that appears on your customer's credit card statement. You will want your DBA name to match what your customer sees when they walk through your door. Unrecognizable names such as "Best Biz LLC" instead of "Hotel ABC" can result in an unwarranted chargeback.

DBA name is entered when setting up your Cloudbeds Payments account inside the PMS. To change it, contact cbpayments@cloudbeds.com.

For a large purchase or first-time customers, do not hesitate to ask for the card holder's ID to match to their physical card. This simple step is the easiest way to minimize fraud.

If you are not comfortable accepting a credit card payment or your client can not provide ID, you can politely ask for a different form of payment or ask them to return with their ID.

Card-not-present transaction possess a higher risk to your business because you cannot ensure it is the cardholder who is completing the transaction. You can accept a credit card with only the card number and expiration date entered. However, the more information you have, the easier it will be to contact a customer if any billing errors or chargebacks occur. 

You should always have full address verification (AVS) activated on your site. AVS verifies that the billing address entered by the customer is the same as the one associated with the cardholder's credit card account.

To configure this you can follow the instructions in the section Billing Address Requirements and Credit Card Configuration in the set up guides.

• Implement a flexible refund policy and issue them under reasonable circumstances.
• Clearly describe the items being sold and display accurate images when possible.
• Reevaluate any products which tend to see higher dispute rates for these reasons. It’s possible the items could be defective.
• Clearly display the full price for the item, including any taxes, and ensure this is presented to the cardholder prior to accepting their payment information.

Friendly fraud happens when a customer makes a purchase online for a product or service with their credit card and then contacts their credit card issuer to dispute the charge — which is not easy to spot at charge acceptance. The best way to prevent these types of disputes is to collect as much information as possible at charge, clearly communicate billing terms and require the cardholder to agree to the terms of service.