Purchasing cards are issued to large corporations and government agencies to support business-to-business and business-to-government credit card transactions. Purchasing cards possess more features, capabilities, and controls than standard consumer credit cards. Purchasing card transactions are estimated to reach $485 Billion by 2016, up from $110 Billion in 2005. If your customers are implementing purchasing card programs to replace inefficient and expensive paper purchase order processes you need to call us. We have special rate programs for Gov’t purchasing card processing.

For merchants, the benefits of accepting purchasing card as payments include improving profitability by reducing payment time from 30-60 days to 2-3 days, reducing collection expenses and reducing the cost of floating funds until payments are received. Qualifying for Level 3 processing rates will reduce processing expensive over traditional retail and MOTO merchant processing. Having Level 3 capability will increase your competitiveness in winning new contracts and may even be a requirement of your buyers.

Level 3 Payment Technology

To take advantage of corporate, business and purchasing card Interchange, merchants must implement payment solutions that meet the more complex requirements of Level 3.

Standard credit card terminals are not capable of supporting Level 3. Payment solutions on the market that support Level 3 include payment software that can be licensed and installed on a PC or a virtual software service that can be accessed through a secure web site application. I recommend the virtual software to avoid having card data stored on local PCs that must be secured. With evolving Level 3 requirements, the virtual software is always the most updated version and multiple users can access the service on any computer with Internet access without traditional software licensing, installation and upgrade issues.

We support multiple Level 3 compliant payment technologies to meet our clients needs including:

• Virtual Terminal (no integration needed and no software to install, simply use your web browser to securely log in to process transactions)
• Real-time Payment Gateway (use our API technical specs to integrate your in-house application or web site to submit Level 3 data)
• Batch processing when real time approvals are not required
• Off-site-PCI secure, customer storage for repeat and recurring transactions

Federal Purchasing Card Processing

• Increase savings, efficiency, and control
• Added reporting capabilities for Federal Organizations
• Enjoy unsurpassed supplier acceptance and data capture

Contact a us for more information regarding Level 3 merchant services.

GSA SmartPay

The GSA SmartPay 2 program provides charge cards to U.S. government agencies/departments, as well as tribal governments, through master contracts that are negotiated with major national banks. There are currently over 350 agencies/organizations participating in the program spending $30 billion annually, through 100 million transactions on over three million cards.

In June 2007, the Office of Charge Card Management awarded the GSA SmartPay 2 master contracts to Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, and U.S. Bank. Through these contracts, agencies can obtain a number of different types of charge card products and services to support their mission needs, including:

• Purchase Cards: Purchasing general supplies and services;
• Travel Cards: Travel expenses related to official government travel (airline, hotel, meals, incidentals);
• Fleet Cards: Fuel and supplies for government vehicles; and
• Integrated Cards: Two or more business lines (card types) whose processes are integrated into one card.

To find out more information about the GSA SmartPay program including the latest charge card news, upcoming GSA SmartPay events, online training, and the new GSA SmartPay blog, visit our website at http://smartpay.gsa.gov.