Seller Payment Info

2A Friendly Payment Solutions for Sellers and Business Owners:

Liberty Gun Trader is a user-friendly platform designed to bring sellers and buyers of firearms together while allowing sellers to use their own trusted payment processors. Our platform supports a seamless transaction experience by integrating popular and secure payment options such as GunTab, Authorize.net, and Fluidpay. Whether you’re buying or selling, Liberty Gun Trader ensures flexibility and security in every transaction, while maintaining compliance with industry standards.

For business owners who sell products related to our nation’s second amendment rights, whether you’re an FFL dealer or someone just selling accessories and non-serialized parts, one of the biggest challenges you will face is finding ways to accept payments from your customers.  Cash has been and will always be king.  But, in a technology forward nation, electronic payment acceptance is easy, more convenient, and especially for the younger generation of consumers who don’t necessarily carry cash or have the cash reserves to buy what they want, credit is usually the way to go. Venmo, Stripe, Paypal, Zelle, and many other convenient methods of electronic transfer of funds are barred for those who sell products that are against their terms of service and of course, this encompasses firearms, ammo, and most accessories related to the industry.  They consider our industry too high risk to support. You’ll find the same hurdles amongst various banks, and most credit card processing companies.  Luckily there are still a few options that support the industry, and from there the hurdle is finding a processor that won’t consider you “high risk” in terms of the rates they offer you, and vetting who will give the best customer service/support, and solutions for your business needs. 

Payroc is leading the charge in supporting the industry when it comes to fair and honest card processing options.  They offer the best rates, customer service, and various integration options to POS systems, websites, and marketplaces such as Liberty Gun Trader.  If you need solid credit card processing, Payroc can support both FFL dealers and those who don’t have an FFL and only sell accessories, or non-serialized parts.  If you’re interested in getting a quote, feel free to click the link below and someone will be in touch within 1 business day to help you get taken care of: 

https://partners.payroc.com/liberty-gun 

Another great option for FFL dealers, non FFL dealers, and private sellers of their personal collection of firearms or accessories is GunTab.  They describe themselves as the “Paypal for Guns” and are geared towards facilitating payments specifically in marketplaces like gunbroker, armslist, and Liberty Gun Trader. They are an an escrow account, so they hold the money from the buyer until after delivery and confirmation from both the seller and buyer that the transaction is fully completed and goods have been delivered.  If you’d like to setup guntab for your seller’s profile, feel free to apply at the link below: 

https://www.guntab.com/sellers

Below are some helpful terms and definitions to help you understand some of the lingo associated with credit card processing:

Card Processing Terminology and Definitions: 

Payment Processor: This refers to the company that you are contracting with to facilitate the acceptance of credit card payments for your goods or services.  They handle the rates you pay for processing, the funding of your money, underwriting of your account, and basically anything to do with the overall processing of your cards payments. 

Card Brands: Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and Amex

Acquiring Bank: This refers to the bank that backs the card processing company you are using.  They usually set the rules/guidelines on what that bank can support (i.e. whether they are firearms/2A friendly or not).

Card Issuer: This refers to the bank that issued the credit card to your customer to pay you with.  So if the customer is using a Visa debit card from Chase bank, then Chase bank is the card issuer. 

Card Terminal: The card reader or card terminal is a standalone device used to simply be able to swipe cards, enter a pin number for debit, etc.  It does not have software for inventory management, etc. 

Interchange: This refers to the wholesale cost of card processing that gets passed to the business owner from the card brands themselves: Visa, Mastercard, Discover and Amex.  The card processing company does not have a say in the interchange cost, and they have to make  a profit, so when you are getting rates/quotes from processing companies, often interchange is either added to the quote, or it’s included in a flat rate pricing depending on how your processor quotes you based on your needs/volume, etc. Many processors can be deceptive and will offer you a seemingly low rate, but not disclose that it’s on top of the interchange cost so in reality your quote is much higher than you think.  Definitely ask questions so you can ensure you get an accurate quote on what to expect.  Payroc is great at explaining the interchange and profit margin so you always get clear and honest pricing.

POS: This is a term often confused as describing the card reader/card terminal to swipe cards on. POS means “Point of Sale” usually referring to a full fledged software, something that handles inventory management, more in depth reporting, customer management, sometimes range management, and more.  

Payment Gateway: If you choose to take cards over the phone, via invoicing with a payment link, your own website, or a marketplace such as Liberty Gun Trader, then you may need a payment gateway.  It’s basically a terminal to safely transmit the cardholder data to the payment processor in a secure manner for processing.  So it’s a card reader, but in a virtual environment.  You usually get a login to a portal to handle the invoices, key in phone transactions, and you can use what’s called API information specific to your payment gateway to connect it to the website in which you want to have automated checkout and payments.  There are various payment gateways, but authorize.net and fluidpay are the most commonly used in the firearms world, and these are the ones that Liberty Gun Trader have chosen to use so you can integrate your card processing into our platform.  Your payment processing company should be able to setup one of these gateways for you as part of their service. 

Retail/MOTO/E-Commerce: These are classifications of the manner in which you choose to accept cards.  Retail simply means swiped in a face to face environment.  MOTO is mail order/telephone order so it refers to any keyed sales, and also encompasses invoicing with a payment link.  E-Commerce means processing through your website with a cart/checkout for your clients to enter their payment and complete the sale on your site. 

PCI Compliance: Every payment processor requires PCI compliance.  It’s a once annual questionnaire (and depending on how you process sometimes requires quarterly scans) that you have to complete to ensure you are following best practices to prevent cardholder data from being compromised or stolen.  If you sign up with a good payment processor, such as Payroc, your rep, or their training department will assist you with walking through this and keeping up on it once annually to avoid exhorbitant PCI non compliance fees. 

Chargeback: Probably one of the most dreaded terms in the card processing world.  A chargeback is when a customer disputes a transaction for a variety of reasons from fraud, to product defective/damaged/not as described, and more. See below to learn more about chargebacks and some best practices on how to try and protect yourself from getting chargebacks/disputes from your customers. 

Chargebacks and Best Practices to Help Avoid Them

One of the most frustrating parts of accepting credit cards is dealing with chargebacks from your customers.  A chargeback is when a customer disputes a transaction for a variety of reasons from fraud, to product defective/damaged/not as described, and more. Unfortunately for business owners, due to the risk of stolen cards and fraud, the card brands setup the chargeback process to favor the cardholder.  When a chargeback is issued by your customer, the money immediately gets taken from your account and goes back to the cardholder.  You as the business owner have 30 days to respond to fight the chargeback, and the risk/chargeback team from your payment processor is who you need to submit the rebuttal to.  You want to be sure to include all relevant information, such as a 4473 as proof of a firearms sale if it was a firearm transaction that is being disputed or tracking info/proof of delivery if it’s an online sale, camera footage of the buyer, any email/text conversations of the buyer.  Basically, anything that can be construed as proof of the legitimate transaction.  The cardholder’s bank ultimately makes the decision on who wins the chargeback, but as long as you have enough proof then it is possible to win the chargeback.  It’s never a guarantee, but your payment processor should work with you to help you stack the odds in your favor.  Here are some best practices to help prevent chargebacks and help you fight them if they do occur: 

1. Swipe the sale face to face as much as you can.  That is considered the most secure way to accept cards and it often constitutes a lower interchange rate from the card brands. Those are much harder to dispute and easier to fight.  If you are trying to save money by not buying a card reader, but you are doing a lot of face to face sales, then you can hurt yourself with more exposure to chargebacks that you can lose easier without swiping those cards. 
2. If you sell in a non-swiped environment such as online, or over the phone/invoicing, then you want to be aware of the following and set your fraud settings in your payment gateway to try to help you ensure the below before fulfilling any orders: 

• Make sure your AVS settings are turned on in your payment gateway.  This checks to see if the billing address of the card matches what is on file with the bank for that card to ensure it’s the actual billing address for that customer’s credit card. 
• Check to see that the billing and shipping address matches for any non-firearms sales.  Since accessories and ammo can be shipped directly to the buyer’s doorstep, checking that that billing and shipping match is the first step to avoiding a fraudulent/stolen card purchase. You can decide if you want to set this up to automatically decline the sale if it doesn’t match in the fraud settings in your payment gateway. Or you can manually check each order.
• If it’s a firearm, then you must be shipping it to an FFL dealer so those are generally at much lower risk for chargebacks since the receiving FFL will have a 4473 as proof of the transfer of the firearm to the purchaser. This isn’t a guarantee against a chargeback, but they are less likely to occur on firearms sales, just given the nature of the transfer process. You also will want to verify the cardholder’s name matches who the firearm will be transferring to. 
• Trust your gut.  If the purchase seems too good to be true, it often is.  We are seeing very high rates of fraud with optics at the moment.  It’s easy for the scammers to buy it on stolen cards and then resell it for a profit.