Starting July 1st 2009 customers who would like to have their medical expenses charged to their FSA1 account, they must purchase the items using a card instead of submitting their receipt for reimbursement after the fact. This change has been made by the IRS and they have given SIG-IS the contract to become the middle-man for providing the distribution of the information needed to bill these new cards.
Although SIG-IS does handle the certification, they themselves do not provide the additional ID numbers needed to bill these cards nor do they actually handle the processing of these cards. These additional ID numbers needed are called an MVV from Visa and an MCID from MasterCard, these numbers coming from Visa and MasterCard themselves.
The IRS claims that SIG-IS membership is NOT required to gain these two numbers and that SIG-IS membership is completely voluntary but as of the time of this writing, there is no other known way to receive the MVV or MCID needed to bill these FSA cards.
The second “job” of SIGIS is to provide the information needed to gain access to what is called the ‘Eligible Product List’ or items that are marked by the IRS that can be covered by an FSA account. SIGIS does not host this file nor control the file; they simply handle the distribution of the information needed to access this file.
Foundation Systems, Inc. has been registered and certified with SIGIS as a Third Party Servicer (TPS) to allow our customers to charge FSA cards using our Point of Sale (POS) and Pharmacy Cash Register (PCR) systems. Which system you will want to use will mostly depend on if your pharmacy qualifies for the ‘90% rule’. SIGIS defines the ‘90% rule’ as a merchant who’s Gross Receipts in the Most Recently Ended Tax Year from sales of Healthcare Eligible Products (HEP) is 90% or more of their total Gross Receipts of that same Tax Year.
The POS system may be used for both pharmacies that are and are not under the 90% rule. The PCR system, which is a minimized version of the POS system, may only be used if a pharmacy is under the 90% rule. The law states that merchants not under the 90% rule must use a system that can differentiate between HEP and non-HEP approved items to bill appropriately to FSA cards and have long term storage of purchases made. The PCR system cannot store transaction information long term; it only stores the previous transaction, nothing more. The PCR system also cannot differentiate between HEP and non-HEP items because it does not maintain a list of different items in a store. The POS system CAN differentiate because it does maintain a list of items and keeps track of which items are and are not HEP after the system has been configured to do so. The POS system also stores transaction data long term, being able to re-print receipts to show what was purchased.
| Not Under 90% Rule | Under 90% Rule | |
| Point of Sale | Required | Recommended |
| Pharmacy Cash Register | Cannot be Used | Required |
To be able to charge FSA / HSA cards, you will be required to complete a series of steps. These steps are slightly different depending on if your pharmacy is a 90% rule pharmacy.
| Step | Not Under 90% Rule | Under 90% Rule |
| 1 | Become SIG-IS Member | Become SIG-IS Member |
| 2 | Complete TPS Client Merchant Form for your Processor | Register as a ‘90% Rule Merchant’. Your processor can help with this. |
| 3 | Register for access to the Eligible Product List | |
| 4 | Complete configuration of POS system with FSI Support | Complete configuration PCR or POS system with FSI Support. |
FSI has created documents to help with each step. Please look for more SIG-IS information on this website or feel free to call our support line for assistance.
As of 12/15/2015, our software is SIG-IS certified to work with the following processors:
- Heartland Payment Systems
- US Bank / Elavon Payment Solutions