MagicPay Launches the American Express Full Acquiring Program

For years merchants who wished to accept American Express cards had to open a secondary merchant account through AMEX and connect it to their regular merchant account provider. The process was inefficient and included many obstacles. One of the most known obstacles was the fact that AMEX could decline your merchant account and you wouldn’t be able to process its cards, limiting you to Visa, MasterCard and the Discover networks.

These times are now over. Although MagicPay has launched the AMEX One-Point program long ago, which gave some merchants the ease of accepting American Express relatively easy, it had a few limitations. The main downside of the AMEX one-point is the fact that all American Express transactions went through AMEX and not through the merchant account provider, meaning the funding was different.

With the new American Express full acquiring program AMEX cards will be treated the same as all other cards. Merchants will enjoy many benefits; at first, the merchant will not have to pay an additional monthly fee to accept American Express. Secondly, all funding will be set from the same account, meaning that merchants will receive Visa / MC / Discover and AMEX, all at the same deposit, making it much easier for accounting purposes.

Another great advantage is the lower interchange rates. Up until now AMEX would usually have a fee of anywhere from 2.89% to 3.49% per transaction. These days are now over and the new rates would be the same as the rest of the cards, bringing the average down to 1.73% if using a MagicPay retail merchant account.

One of the most important benefits of the new setting is the fact that all customer service inquiries will be handled through the merchant service provider. Up until now if you had a problem with AMEX you would need to call directly to them. From now on, all transactions, including AMEX would be taken care of by our customer service representatives, saving you valuable time.

Last but not least, one statement will be provided for all cards. If in the past merchants were to receive 2 statements, one from their merchant services provider and another from AMEX, today one statement from your merchant services provider would include all transactions.