The Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) announced today the launch of a new Payment Facilitator Committee, with Kevin Harris (RunSignup Chief Finance and Operations Officer) taking the role of Vice-Chair. ETA Press Release: http://www.electran.org/publication/transactiontrends/eta-announces-new-payments-facilitator-committee/
As noted in the release, the committee “will serve as a resource within ETA as the established, valued experts on payment facilitators, enabling deeper discussions on emerging industry challenges and assessing opportunities. The committee will also serve to consider public policy matters that may affect this constituency.”
As one of only a few hundred registered payment facilitators RunSignup has taken steps as a company to meet stringent security, banking, VISA and MasterCard processing rules to become an authorized intermediary (Payment Facilitator) between credit card holders (registrants) and races . As such, when transactions are settled for your race, the race proceeds are held in escrow for your benefit with our back end credit card processing company. Funds transfers to you happen accurately and on time by either ACH or check, based on the frequency of payment that you request.
We became a payment facilitator to ensure that we were complying with financial rules and because we think it is the best way to handle your funds. It addresses the need to be able to quickly onboard smaller sub-merchants and allows businesses like RunSignup to enable commerce between the buyers and sellers of services. We are pleased to see this secure form of online commerce grow and are proud to have one of our employees take a leadership role in shaping the industry.
Becoming a Payment Facilitator and recently achieving PCI Level 1 compliance are key pieces to our secure data and transaction processing. You can read about all the ways that we keep your data private and secure here.
A few things to look for in evaluating data security and transaction processing in a race technology provider:
- Does the provider have secure, scalable technology?
- Are they PCI Level 1 compliant with independent auditors?
- Do they keep your race funds separate from the funds that they use to operate their business?
- Do they have a privacy policy for how they will collect, store, and share data?
- Will they use participant data to market or sell unrelated events, subscriptions, or other items to your race participants?
- Do they have a proven track record in the industry?