Great Falls College MSU offers different payment methods to students and non-students, in-person and online. This addresses who is allowed to do so and what the requirements and responsibilities are of the merchant/department and business services.

A department wishing to set up a credit card terminal must contact business services to do so. There is no formal application. Only business services is authorized to set up proper processor merchant application and banking information. Information technology services will be involved to ensure connections are sufficient and meet PCI Compliance, and assist in purchasing a point of sale - credit card terminal. Great Falls College will work with MSU Bozeman to set up Commerce Manager if online payments will be accepted. Please allow at least 6 weeks for set up of this complex process.

Any employee with access to credit card terminals or who take payment via credit card will annually renew a PCI Compliance Training Certificate that is tracked by MSU Bozeman. PCI DSS means Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard and it helps ensure the security of credit card transactions.

Great Falls College accepts Visa, MasterCard, and Discover. The most secure method of accepting card payments is through our online portals. However, if this is not available, the preferred method of accepting payment is swiping or inserting a physical card. Card payments may be accepted over the phone but only as a last option Taking credit card information over the phone should be kept to a minimum. If that is the only option, immediately destroy any paper where information was written down. Great Falls College does not keep credit card information on file for future billing or automatic payments.

There are several acceptable instances when credit cards may be refunded. If the payment was made, but the credit card machine has not been settled, then the transaction can be voided. If the machine was settled, then the amount can be refunded. Any Commerce Manager refunds must be submitted to business services, which will do the refunds. Please allow up to 5 days for processing.

A departmental employee must be responsible for reconciling and settling the credit card machine every business day. Receipts and settlement slip will be turned over to business services with documentation as to the index that earned the revenue. Business services will post revenue in Banner, but can only do so with receipt documentation. A department using Commerce Manager for online payments do not need to provide credit card documentation to business services. The department may need to provide accounting information to business services.

A cost of accepting credit/debit card payments is paying fees. Each department that uses a credit/debit card machine will be charged the monthly fees for operating the machine. This varies due to volume and the exact amount deducted from the bank account.