Credit Card Payment Solutions- Every sale requires both an authorization and a deposit.
Always note the Authorization Code. An Authorization Code indicates that the cardholder has the credit to pay for the purchase. This assures you of payment, as long as:

• A valid card was used by the authorized cardholder.
  
• The cardholder (not someone else) has signed a sales draft.
  
• The signature on the sales draft was matched against the signature on the back of the card.
  
• You have proof that the card was present (a receipt created by your printer as the result of a magnetic stripe read, or an imprint of the card created by your imprinter.) You won't have this for mail order, telephone order, etc., increasing the risk.
  
• The transaction is not disputed later by the cardholder. (If this happens, you'll have to fight for your money through the chargeback process.)
  
  When the goods or services are provided at the time of the sale, the authorization and deposit are simultaneous. However, if the customer is paying hours or days before she'll receive the goods or services, transact the authorization first: this reserves the amount from the cardholder's credit balance for you. Perform the deposit transaction when the goods or services are delivered.
  
  To avoid a pass-through fee on the transaction, make sure you deposit as soon as possible after the goods are delivered. After three days, the pass-through will be applied, but that's no excuse to make the deposit before the goods are shipped. Do not wait longer than 30 days, or you’ll need to obtain a new authorization.
  
  Protecting Cardholder Information-a part of the process of Credit Card Payment Solutions:
  We've all heard about companies who have become victims of thieves who steal credit card information stored by merchants. To avoid this, your responsibilities to safeguard data include the following:
  
• Don't share, sell, purchase or exchange cardholder names and account numbers in any form.
  
• Secure all records, electronic or otherwise, that include cardholder names, account information, transaction information etc. to prevent access by anyone other than your processor.
  
• Never store magnetic stripe data. In the electronic commerce arena, a number of best practices to help protect data from unauthorized access include:
  
• Encrypt cardholder data and only store that data in encrypted form.
  
• Back up files only in encrypted form.
  
• Secure encryption and communication keys in a secure hardware device or tamper-resistant security module.
  
• Limit personnel access to computers.
  
• Encrypt and decrypt within a secure hardware device. This isolates the encryption keys and minimizes their exposure.
  
• Manage all keys using split knowledge and dual control so no one person can have access to data in the absence of other employees.
  
• Protect access to file servers.