Why is Personal Info required for Merchant Accounts?

As an existing or potential business owner, you’re probably already aware of how important it is to be able to accept credit and debit cards as payment methods from your customers. Over 70% of Americans have credit cards. According to data collected in Gallup polls, the average American has 2.6 credit cards. Credit and debit card acceptance prevents the possible loss of a sale from customers who frequently carry little or no cash.
Central to this equation is a business having a merchant account and a relationship with a merchant services provider. The primary function of a merchant account is to process electronic payments made via credit and debit card purchases and to hold those funds after the transaction. Basically merchant accounts act as short term escrow accounts. The banks issuing the credit cards are essentially agreeing to make payments to merchants on behalf of credit card-carrying customers. But fronting payments involves risk to the issuing banks and risk to the payment processor alike, and one of the ways that risk is minimized is by building lag time through a merchant account into the cash flow. Funds deposited into a merchant account are automatically transferred to your business banking account, usually within 1-2 business days.
To establish a merchant account, the account holder must provide personal information. Section 326 of the U.S. Patriot Act, signed into law in October 2001 requires a person to provide “Social Security Number and other identifying information such as Date of Birth and home address, when applying for and the creation of a merchant account application.”
While we understand that some business owners are uneasy providing sensitive information, it’s the law. This is why you should trust the POS company you are providing your personal information to. Also, you should be aware how your business’s purchasing process is integrated with thirty party contractors and whom those contractors are. If your payment system goes down, you want to know the correct company to call.
Sintel Systems Global POS is the POS industry’s only single source and direct POS onmi-channel solution provider. We offer the best merchant account services with the highest level of service, support, and security because we do not rely on third party integration. Our EMV (chip card) and PCI compliant merchant services are fully embedded with our POS systems giving you the peace of mind to process transactions securely and quickly at low rates.
Sintel Systems clients can rest assured that their customer information is secure. Among other procedures, Sintel Systems uses tokenization and encryption to protect purchasers’ data during transactions. Tokenization means that a random identifier called a ‘token’ is substituted for sensitive data. The token is a reference that maps back to the sensitive data through a tokenization system. Encryption is the procedure of encoding information in such a way that only authorized parties can understand it. The intended information is encrypted using an encryption algorithm called a ‘cipher’. Once encrypted, the now ciphered information can be read only if decrypted. Encryption usually uses an encryption key generated by an algorithm. When the purchase is complete, Sintel Systems does not retain sensitive customer information.
Sintel Systems Global POS is the POS industry’s only single source and direct POS onmi-channel solution provider. For more information about Sintel System’s embedded merchant services please visit here: https://www.sintelsystems.com/sintelmerchant