- Are accepted for the purpose of paying bills
- Are accepted for general and trust receipting purposes
- Carry a surcharge (merchant fee)
- Debit a (general) merchant account instead of a bank account
The list can also be used to specifically mention cards which are not accepted.
On printed bills, ContactsLaw will summarise the policy formed by the list of accepted credit cards. It will clearly indicate which cards carry a surcharge and which do not (including scenarios with different surcharges for different card types), and will list each accepted card type as an option on the authority tear-off.
EFTPOS
For the purpose of this feature, EFTPOS is considered to be a type of card. EFTPOS should never appear on bills, as payments of this type cannot be made in the payee's absence via an authority (as is possible with credit cards).
Unbanked
By default, general credit card receipts use the 'Credit card / EFTPOS' payment method and post cash transactions. If a merchant account is associated with a credit card type, the card type is only available via the 'Credit card (unbanked)' payment method. Receipts record when the POS transactions occur, while a separate merchant account journal must be posted when the funds appear in a bank account.
Trust
Trust receipts by credit card behave somewhat differently to the above. Like receipts by cheque, funds received by credit card are initially regarded as uncleared until a specified number of business days elapses. They also support
receipt aggregation, allowing a further verification step to ensure that transactions have appeared on the bank account before they are marked as processed.
In situations where a surcharge applies to certain card types, ContactsLaw allows the nomination of a
disbursement journal type which will be billed to the
file upon processing the receipt. You can also configure a practice-wide authority that will be attached to the
trust transfer that pays the bill for the surcharge.