Settle Smart – How To Do Credit Card Payment
The first step in doing a credit card payment is to understand your monthly billing. The following are terms you will encounter:
Statement date – The date that the bill was printed. Payment due date – this is the day that the cardholder must pay any outstanding balance.
Payments made after the said date will be credited, but will also be fined a lateness fee.
Total Amount Due – It consist of the unpaid amount from the previous month, as well as purchases, payments and interest charges for the current month. When the cardholder pays this amount on or before the payment due date, no interest charges will be imposed.
Minimum Amount Due – this is a smaller fraction of the total amount due. To maintain a good standing with the card company, pay at least this amount, if you cannot afford to pay the total amount due.
Finance charge – if the cardholder is not able to pay the total amount due, then he is charged a fee for borrowing money from the company. It is calculated based on the interest rate of the card. For detailed information on how this is calculated, go to http://www.abcguides.com/creditcards/cci_faq.htm#finance_charges.
Late charges – Paying or not, after the payment due date, is penalized with late charges. Avoid this as much as possible as this is almost 2X the interest rate of the finance charge.
Consistently missing payment may lead to cancellation of the card and a bad credit standing. Having understood the information on your monthly bill, here are simple strategies for paying your credit card charges:
Always pay the total amount due. Paying only the minimum amount due means being charged for a high interest rate on the unpaid amount.
If you cannot pay the total amount due, pay as much as you can above the minimum amount due. This strategy aims to reduce the finance charges that you have to pay for settling partially.
Do partial payments as early as possible (as soon as you receive the billing). Finance charges are based on the unsettled amount and the time it remains unsettled, so the shorter it is, the lower it will be for finance charges.
Some card companies reward loyal cardholders by accumulating points for their spending. Check if reward points can be credited back as payment.
Lastly, pay the total amount due. Just to emphasize the point!
There are many avenues to pay your card bill. There’s the traditional way of waiting in line, or the faster way of paying electronically through your computer, cash machine or mobile phone.
With all these conveniences at hand, it is quite unforgivable to miss your payment due date. Therefore, settle smart: pay the total, pay on time.
Watch the video related to credit card payment
A former bank employee explains how credit card companies use sneaky payment and interest tricks to get more money out of you.
May 28th, 2009 at 11:24 am
About your credit, if you've had this card a decent amount of time and have shown the unblemished history you report, you should calll their customer service and throw yourself at the mercy of the person who answers. Tell them honestly what happened, and ask them to look at your payment history and see that it is completely out of character for you. Ask that they accept another payment, and tell them you are cancelling the original check. If you can pay them immediately by debit or other means, do so. They really might take the blot off your credit rating if you do it once and never again. It worked for me. Don't forget to cancel that check at the bank. I feel for you, I have been there, but my credit card company was surprisingly nice about it. Good luck!
May 28th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
When you make the purchase you debit the appropriate expense or asset account for $1,000 and credit current liabilities. As you make payments, you debit current liabilities for the principal portion of the payment, debit interest expense for the interest portion, and credit cash for the amount of the payment.
If this is all Greek to you, consider a consultation with a CPA or EA who specializes in small business accounting and taxation to get set up on a bookkeeping system.
May 30th, 2009 at 11:02 am
How Payment Processing Works
Before being able to accept credit card transactions and other forms of online payments, a merchant will need to set up a merchant account with a bank. A merchant account is the industry term for a business banking relationship whereby you and a bank have arranged to accept credit card payments (usually, a local bank can suffice for this kind of relationship). Setting up a merchant account usually involves the bank understanding your business and working with a third-party processor to arrange a mechanism for accepting payments. For more information on setting up merchant accounts, we recommend you take a look through the http://www.card-gallery.com to get you started in the right direction.
May 30th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
You have a couple of options.
Many Internet providers offer a checkout system for free or at minimal cost for the sites that they host. Mine does, although I don't use it because I don't sell anything.
If you are selling as an eBay shop, or even if you don't, then you can use PayPal for checking out and PayPal automatically accepts credit cards including Amex.
You can use a proprietary shopping basket checkout system through Yahoo or otherwise. Here's a specimen:
http://www.make-a-store.com/site/category/Yahoo_Software_Web_Service_Shopping_Cart_Software
I found it by Googling <Yahoo shopping basket>. There are a number of firms doing the same thing.
You can probably do it cheaper, maybe for free, with Yahoo! directly. Here't the link for that:
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/index.php
I don't think you ought to deal with credit card companies directly. You could easily get scammed by fraudsters using stolen or fake cards. The professionals take some or all of the risk off your hands, and they can check online for bad cards, and check addresses and CVV numbers and expiration dates.
Be careful: I would be cautious about shipping anything abroad except to Canada. And don't give refunds — especially for overpayments — until your bank tells you the money is cleared "without recourse", meaning no chargeback is possible.
Google <nigeria 419> and learn a bit about Internet scams, how even certified and cashiers checks, US postal money orders and Wal-Mart money orders are faked. Especially from overseas.
May 30th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
No, not unless it becomes a habit and they can see a pattern in late payments. Your late charge fee wiped out your payment. I had a 10.00 min payment due one time and was late. I got charged 25.00 late fee.
May 31st, 2009 at 8:22 am
Call the credit card company and let them know that you realize you've missed two payments, but you're sending one in now. They'll be happy you called (if not, hang up on her) and even more happy that you now have to pay the added late fees and finance charges.
May 31st, 2009 at 1:13 pm
There are many things to consider in making that decision.
Do you have a shopping cart?
How fast do you want the funds into your acount?
Would you process the card over the internet or by phone?
You can get a complete package for the shopping cart and credit card processing. However, you need to consider a few things.
First. If you want the credit card sales to be automatically put into your bank account within 48hrs, PayPal is a bad option. It can take a few days for the transaction to hit your account and you must manually transfer the funds. A traditional merchant account will get the funds there quicker.
Second. PRICE. Make sure you are on the right pricing program. Will you be selling to businesses or individuals? You need to make sure and clarify the difference with the processor you choose.
Third. If you are taking your orders via the phone with just a informative website, all you need is a Virtual Terminal. Do not get a machine!
You can get more information here:
http://www.omnitranz.com
Good Luck!
May 31st, 2009 at 6:04 pm
As long as it is not 30-days or more late they will not report it as late.
May 31st, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Those other responses didn't directly answer the question.
First, it is correct that paying more than the minimum *won't* affect your score. What you are trying to accomplish is to keep from being characterized by the CC companies as a struggling payer. The strategy is to pay the min plus a little while paying down other cards.
My experience is that paying an extra percent above the min will keep the CC software from identifying you as a "minimum only" payer. To be safe since some companies are bumping the min from 2.5% to 3%, I suggest you pay 4%.