Payment processing is at the heart of every swipe, tap, or entry of a credit or debit payment, making it a crucial service that all merchants depend on. If you’re like most merchants, low fees and value-added services might be the first thing that comes to mind when evaluating potential processing partners, but there’s a […]
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The Importance of Great Customer Service in the Merchant Industry
Your ecommerce merchant services provider is one of the easiest factors to overlook when it comes to the success or failure of your ecommerce business. It can be easy to assume that all merchant services providers are the same, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The processing partner you choose will impact everything […]
When your customers make card purchases, for one reason or another, the money from those credit card transactions often doesn’t hit your bank account for two, or even three business days. In some cases, those delays — known as standard holds — are for fraud protection and risk mitigation reasons, and in some cases it […]
Cash payments have fallen out of favor, making up only 12% of transactions in the U.S. in 2020. The global COVID-19 pandemic has driven that down even further as health-conscious consumers have flocked to contactless payments. With card payments now the standard, even the smallest merchants need to find ways to move away from cash […]
Selling to businesses (or governments) is a different proposition than selling to consumers because the value of the average sale is so much higher — often in the tens of thousands and potentially ranging up into the millions. In the B2B world, security is at an even higher premium than normal, and cost management is […]
When businesses buy things from each other, how do they do it? While extremely large capital purchases are sometimes made with bank transfers, you might be surprised at just how often even large business expenses are paid for with credit cards. However, accepting B2B credit card payments on major sales is generally not the same […]
Clover is one of the world’s leading POS systems, with over $133 billion in card transactions processed annually for thousands of merchants around the globe. One major selling point that draws many of those merchants to the Clover POS is the robust app market that offers over 150 easy-to-install upgrades and enhancements. The app market […]
Toast is one of the premier merchant services providers in the restaurant industry, offering a full suite of products and services designed specifically to help restaurateurs do business and accept payments. But with so many POS systems and payment processors available on the market, determining whether Toast is the right partner can be difficult for […]
If there is one lesson the global COVID-19 pandemic taught business owners, it’s the importance of having access to the money needed to get through times of emergency. A strong emergency fund is the first line of defense, but whether the money is to ride out a storm, finance a new capital project, or anything […]
Accepting American Express cards hasn’t always been easy – especially for small business owners. When consumers think “credit card,” Visa and Mastercard are generally the two brands that come to mind first, because those two cards, along with Discover cards, are accepted by effectively every single merchant that offers credit card payments. For decades, American […]
When business is tight, it becomes more important than ever for merchants to squeeze every ounce of value they can from their operations – including payment processing. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic with widespread closures and tightening consumer spending habits, many merchants are on the market for new payment processing partners that can […]
“Don’t do business without it” is the merchant-side slogan of American Express. Yet, for decades, countless merchants have done exactly that. American Express processing was expensive and couldn’t be mixed with payment processing for any other card company, making it more problematic than it was worth for most small merchants. As a result, many stores […]
Digital wallets are new payment solutions offered by a wide variety of operating system and device manufacturers that allow users to store an entire wallet’s worth of cards in digital format on their smartphones, tablets, and even watches. Apple Pay is the digital wallet that comes stock on all iPhones and all new MacBooks, making […]
With 2020 in the rearview mirror, it’s time to start looking ahead to the new trends and technologies that will define the payments space in 2021. Industry news for January is still heavily impacted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and includes new resources for merchants around the country, a brand new cloud-based mobile POS, and […]
Mobile devices have become an ingrained and integral part of our daily lives. Today, over 80% of adults in the United States own a smartphone, and roughly half own a tablet. More than just communication tools, those mobile devices exist to entertain us and make our lives easier, and, unsurprisingly, they’ve become a go-to tool […]
COVID-19 has caused enormous hardships for small business owners across the vast majority of industries, but perhaps no sector has been hit harder than food service. The rapid spread of the virus has damaged the restaurant industry in two major ways; far-reaching regulatory restrictions and changes to consumer behavior.
Nobody likes waiting to access money they have rightfully earned. Yet, that’s the situation the vast majority of merchants are forced to deal with on every single sale they make due to the standard funding holds imposed by most payment processors. Those processors’ merchant accounts don’t give merchants access to the funds from their sales […]
2020 was an unprecedented year for brick and mortar merchants, as the global COVID-19 pandemic saw many businesses forced to close and strict guidelines put in place limiting in-store activities. In turn, consumers flocked online, boosting ecommerce sales by 45% year-over-year and accelerating ecommerce adoption by as much as five years. Consumer habits are like […]
A touch screen point-of-sale (POS) system is like a typical POS system, but the software operates on handheld devices and tablets, rather than traditional POS hardware. Touch screen POS systems are web-based and can synchronize in real time to a variety of other software solutions, enabling merchants to monitor their businesses from anywhere in the […]
