Audit your rates, renegotiate terms, and lock in savings before holiday volume amplifies every fee Learn how to calculate your true effective processing rate, identify fees vulnerable to seasonal inflation, and negotiate better processor terms. This pre-season audit guide helps eCommerce managers prevent small rate differences from becoming major expenses when volume spikes. TL;DR A […]
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How to Cut Payment Processing Costs Before Peak Season
The past few years have seen a sea of change in the payments industry and the role that EMV payment cards play in the lives of consumers. Worldwide health measures have changed the way we pay in-person, and, today, cash is no longer king – so much so that many consumers no longer carry any […]
How Advanced Merchant Reporting Helps Businesses Make Better Decisions Better Payment Data Gives Merchants a Clearer View of the Business Merchant reporting should do more than tell you how much you processed yesterday. Good reporting helps connect the money moving through your payment account with the decisions you need to make around cash flow, reconciliation, […]
Getting a Card Approved Is Not the Same as Getting the Money When a customer completes a credit or debit card purchase, the transaction may be approved in seconds. That does not mean the money is already sitting in the merchant’s bank account. Authorization, batching, settlement and merchant funding are separate parts of the payment […]
Your POS Can Do Much More Than Ring Up Sales Point-of-sale systems are mission-critical tools for retailers and restaurants, providing the system through which sales are made and inventory is controlled. But POS systems can do a lot more than just process transactions if a merchant has the right integrations. Integrations allow merchants to squeeze […]
Apple is arguably the biggest name in consumer tech, and with so many people around the world using their devices, the advent of digital wallets made it clear they’d be a dominant player in payments as well. The success of Apple’s digital wallet, Apple Pay, proved that its users were ready for Apple-branded mobile digital […]
Clover is a popular small business point of sale system, offering retailers and restaurants intuitive POS software and a wide variety of hardware choices. But one of Clover’s most standout features is its well-stocked third-party app market, which enables Clover users to expand and refine the capabilities of their systems, as needed, in a matter […]
Toast POS is one of the most popular point-of-sale systems in the restaurant industry. It’s known for feature-rich and easy-to-use software and a wide variety of hardware options. But while Toast POS is both highly capable and user-friendly, it does have some notable drawbacks, including the cost of payment processing and dependence on proprietary hardware. […]
Choosing a new payment processor is an important task, as payments are at the core of all businesses. But with so many options on the market, it can be hard for merchants to know how to differentiate one processor from another. When requesting a merchant services quote, many business owners will focus on price and […]
Next day funding is a service provided by some payment processors that gives merchants access to the money from their sales in a single business day – in some cases, as little as ten to twelve hours after transactions are submitted. Next day funding stands in contrast to the industry standard practice of holding funds […]
Payment gateways are software tools that enable transaction processing by acting as the bridge between the end customer and a merchant’s payment processor. Every transaction – both online and off – goes through some type of payment gateway. In ecommerce, payment gateways provide everything from payment data encryption to two-way communication to fraud protection and […]
Merchants can fight chargebacks and, while many don’t, all should whenever possible because chargebacks matter. Chargebacks cost merchants money in the form of lost revenues and, in many cases, lost inventory. They also raise red flags when they start to rack up, causing potential strains in relationships with payment processors and the major card companies […]
An ecommerce merchant is a business that sells online and utilizes payment processing services to collect card payments. In a terminology-heavy industry like payment processing, it can be easy for confusion to arise about what certain terms mean and don’t mean. “Merchant” is one of those terms, and many people incorrectly assume that all businesses […]
Amex OptBlue is a program designed to make American Express payments more accessible to small businesses. Traditionally, the high barriers to entry on the network and the extremely high transaction fees made American Express more trouble than it was worth for smaller merchants. To remedy that problem, the company created the Amex OptBlue program, which […]
Choosing a Merchant Account Is About More Than the Processing Rate A merchant account is a mission-critical piece of the payments puzzle for many full-time business owners doing significant card volume. But for new and experienced merchants alike, getting set up with a new account can seem opaque. Independent sales organizations, commonly called ISOs, work […]
Next day funding is a feature offered by certain payment processors that allows merchants to access the money from their batched transactions in a single day – in some cases, as little as ten hours after a transaction is submitted. Most merchants on standard funding plans don’t get access to their funds nearly as quickly, […]
Payment processing is a complex industry with a lot of moving parts, a lot of tech, and a lot of security rules. But, for the end merchant, all that complexity represents a needless source of headaches and potential business interruptions. The best payment processors offer simple merchant services that allow businesses to focus solely on […]
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, or PCI-DSS, is a security standard that must be met by all companies that handle, store, or transmit credit card data from the major card brands. It exists to protect consumers and minimize the potential damage associated with payment-related data breaches. PCI compliance refers to a company’s ongoing […]
A retail POS, or point-of-sale system, is a combination of hardware and software designed to facilitate purchases at a checkout counter in retail and dining. A POS effectively automates most of the functions of an old cash register. Rather than having to punch in a product’s information and price and manually apply taxes, a POS […]
