Any processor can set you up to accept Government Purchase Cards and GSA Cards. If your goal is to just accept government credit card payments, stay with your current vendor or say yes to any of the dozens of merchant representatives who call your business every month.

To accept government purchase cards at the lowest cost possible, then continue reading.

Accepting government purchase cards is the same process as accepting any form of credit card payment… unless you want to do it at the lowest cost.

How to accept government purchase cards:

Government purchase cards qualify at one of three interchange levels

• Level 1 (highest cost)
• Level 2 (lower cost)
• Level 3 (lowest cost)

If your current technology that you’re using to process government purchase cards is not passing Level 3 data, then you will always be overpaying for processing government purchase cards. The savings by going from Level 1 to Level 3 processing can reach 1.5% of the transaction or more for larger transactions.

For card-not-present transactions (keyed in over the phone or taken on a website), Square charges 3.5% plus 15¢ per transaction. PayPal charges 2.9% plus 25¢ and QuickBooks charges 2.75% plus 30¢.

If you’re a government contractor accepting payments from federal, state, or local government, level 3 processing is critical for your business. Imagine gaining an extra 1% or 2% directly to your bottom line without having to sell anything else? Without having to staff any additional positions?