A Card-Present (CP) transaction is exactly what it sounds like: a payment processed in a physical retail environment where both the cardholder and the physical credit or debit card are present at the time of the sale. The card is physically interacted with via a magnetic swipe, an EMV chip dip, or an NFC contactless tap.
Lower Risk, Different Compliance
Because the merchant can physically verify the card (and potentially the customer's ID), CP transactions have historically suffered from much lower fraud rates than Card-Not-Present (CNP) e-commerce transactions. Consequently, CP transactions benefit from lower interchange fees. However, the physical hardware used requires strict compliance adherence to prevent skimming.
Simplifying Compliance for CP Merchants
Brick-and-mortar merchants processing CP transactions are often overwhelmed by compliance paperwork. Onlayer’s Intelligent PCI Wizard removes the confusion. By asking simple questions about their terminal setups, the wizard guides CP merchants to the exact SAQ type automatically, achieving a 100% classification match rate without the need for manual risk team intervention.
