CrossCheck Blog

A current study by the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) found that there is a serious shortage of car mechanics at dealerships, somewhere around 20,000 – 25,000 people. The trade group predicts that dealers will need another 46,000 more people by 2026. If you own or manage a dealership, this will keep you up at night, because today the parts and service area (aka “fixed ops”) comprises fully 49% of the dealership’s gross profit. It’s what keeps the lights on and pays the bills!

CrossCheck started in the check guarantee business way back in 1983. Checks ruled at the time, and nearly every merchant accepted them at the point of sale. Back then, in fact, many merchants did not take credit cards at all. This was due, in part, to the high cost of interchange and because processing a card transaction was much more complicated than taking a check. Merchants had to put a bulky multi-part carbon form in a knuckle-busting sliding imprinter (aka “Zip Zap machine”), and then sort out the forms and send them out for processing. There is a reason why it was called a “knuckle buster.” By comparison, taking a check was pretty easy, comfortable, and familiar to merchants, and consumers commonly wrote them for purchases at the store.

When merchants sell something, they expect to get paid in full right away in order to generate more revenue. They don’t expect to have the payment fail for one reason or another, and never get the money. This seems pretty obvious, but every payment system has failure points, except perhaps the Federal Reserve Wire Transfer system (and even this is not immune from fraud). In this short piece, we will explore the concept of check guarantee, and how check guarantee providers manage their business to meet predictable targets for payment failure, salvage, and write-offs. Not every business is a candidate for check guarantee, but for those that are, such as car dealers and building supply companies, they can’t live without it!

Here at CrossCheck, I am fortunate to attend a variety of payments industry events, such as the CardNotPresent Expo (CNP) last month, and two previous conferences by the Information Security Media Group, the world’s largest media organization devoted solely to information security and risk management. Seminar sessions are offered at most of these events, and the informational sharing is invaluable. I thought I had a good understanding of the perils involved in accepting payments, but I was very surprised to learn at the CNP Expo that fraud is now increasing auto dealership risk. If your dealership has not experienced a recent uptick in consumer fraud, you are about to, so you might want to read this.

If you are a merchant, there cannot be too many things that are more aggravating than getting a notice from your bank that you are not going to get paid because a customer put a stop payment on a check written to you. Your first reaction would probably be surprise, then disappointment, and then anger. “How could they do this to me? … I gave them a good product at a good price and I provided good customer service too.” As detailed below, there are legitimate reasons for requesting stop payments. On the other hand, writing a check and then stopping payment to avoid getting charged can be considered check fraud, which is a crime actionable at law. Before we get into all that, let’s look at how a merchant-customer relationship is supposed to work.

Recently Facebook made a big announcement. They are launching their own currency, hoping to go live in the first half of 2020. Actually, it is a cryptocurrency called Libra. They are developing a digital wallet to take the currency, called Calibra. Facebook says that their goal is to bring a new type of digital payment to anyone with a smartphone, which some people say is the functional equivalent of an online digital bank. You buy or cash out your Libra online or at a local exchange point, like a grocery store. You spend it using interoperable third-party wallet apps, or the Calibra wallet that is built into WhatsApp, Messenger, and its own app. The idea is that sending money to friends or paying for something at a merchant is just as easy as sending them a Facebook message.

Buying a house or condo is the most important financial decision that most of us will ever make. It takes a special degree of commitment, dedication, savings, financial expertise … and luck … to reach that level of achievement. Unfortunately, only about 64 percent of American families currently own homes. First-time home owners have a whole new list of things to deal with — mortgage payments, property taxes, home insurance, yard work, and who knows what else! Owning a home is not for everyone, but for many people, it is a lifelong dream. When people buy their first house, they are typically starting with a blank interior canvas. Their goal is to “make a house a home.”

“Today is the slowest technology will be in our lifetime,” said Xerox President and COO Steve Bandrowczak in a Corporate Board Member article. “The pace of change will accelerate and leadership skills and leading through change are going to create a tremendous amount of winners and losers.” His observation about speed should hold true in places where electricity and internet connections are commonplace while his insights on leadership sound like a corporate application of natural selection.

Did you ever wonder what happens when you use your credit card at a merchant to buy goods or services? If you’re like most people, you probably never give these type of electronic payments a second thought. You just know that everything happens magically and instantly as you insert your chip in the reader or swipe the card, or enter the card information into the merchant’s online payment gateway. The next time you see it is when you get the bill from your card issuing bank a few weeks later. There is a lot going on behind the scenes, and it is pretty interesting how it all works. Here is a high level view of that process, but first a little background.

In our last column, we talked about the challenges and intricacies of being a car dealer, and along those lines, why a car dealer would need a reliable and robust Dealer Management System (DMS). The car retailing business is unique. It has a lot of moving parts and there is a lot of money flowing through it every week. The owners and managers need to stay on top of the numbers that drive the business every day, not once a month. The DMS is a kind of supercharged general ledger accounting system that addresses the unique needs of a car dealer. Consequently, you do not want to change DMS or providers lightly; it is a big commitment to learn how to use a DMS and is usually a long-term commitment.