NYC Merchant Services Archives - Merchant Account & E Commerce Payment Processing Insights

April 23, 2019

An Introduction To BAMS’ Popular E-Commerce Integrations

We now live in a digital world, and online shopping has become king. A 2018 study by NPR found that an astounding 75% of Americans have purchased something online, and every year consumers shift more and more of their shopping to the web. As the leader in electronic payments, we at BAMS understand how important it is for our partners to have strong, stable e-commerce platforms, and as a result, we’ve designed BAMS to integrate with all of the most popular payment gateways, online checkout solutions, and fully-featured e-commerce platforms. Here are just a few of the many e-commerce integrations available through BAMS.

Authorize.Net

Authorize.Net is the world’s largest online payment gateway, allowing merchants to accept e-commerce payments with credit cards, ACH eChecks, PayPal, ApplePay, and more. Now owned by Visa, it offers outstanding security and fraud protection and an extensive list of third-party integrations. Authotize.Net also offers streamlined single-click payment options designed to enable transactions like charity donations to be made with a minimal headache for the end-user.

Magento

Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform owned by Adobe that has been used by over 250,000 online stores worldwide. Magento is one of the oldest players in e-commerce solutions, and its availability as a one-click install from a number of major hosting providers has aided its popularity. Like Authorize.Net, there is an enormous list of third-party applications that can be easily integrated with Magento stores to expand their functionality.

CyberSource

CyberSource is another e-commerce payment system owned by Visa, used by 400,000 merchants all over the world. It provides secure online checkout functionality to online stores, enabling them to accept major credit cards, as well as third-party solutions like PayPal. Its Decision Manager product is the world’s largest fraud detection system, processing and analyzing data from over 68 billion transactions annually.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a Texas-based e-commerce company offering online shopping products for websites, blogs, and social media applications like Instagram and Facebook. BigCommerce is highly scalable and offers hundreds of built-in features users can employ right out of the box without having to turn to third-party plugins. That scalability has made BigCommerce the number one eCommerce platform for businesses that bring in $1 million or more in sales each year, and it’s currently used by world-class brands like Toyota, Gibson guitars, and more.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a fully-featured e-commerce plugin specifically designed to operate with the WordPress content management system. Thanks to the widespread use of WordPress, WooCommerce has grown into one of the web’s most popular e-commerce solutions, boasting over 64,000,000 downloads. In addition to e-commerce and shopping cart functionality, WooCommerce offers a full suite of website themes, allowing users to build professional online stores using nothing but the WooCommerce platform and WordPress.

Volusion

Volusion is an all-in-one e-commerce platform that allows users to design fully-functional e-commerce websites from scratch using a suite of built-in tools and modules. It essentially acts as a content management system and e-commerce platform in one, allowing users to build out their online stores page by page, skin them with professionally designed themes, and then populate the shopping areas with all the flexibility and functionality required. In addition to its store and shopping cart features, it also includes built-in marketing tools like search engine optimization and social integration.

Our long list of popular e-commerce integrations means that when you partner with us for your merchant account, you’ll be able to seamlessly integrate BAMS with your existing e-commerce solutions without having to worry about the hassle of changing your checkout process, your store setup, or your users’ experience. Contact us today to find out how BAMS can help you save money and streamline your online payment processing right away!

April 11, 2019

What BAMS Can Do For Your Supermarket?

Your supermarket depends on the people that live in your local community, and just as importantly, they depend on you. Your success and growth come down to the quality of service you provide and the value your customers get for their hard-earned dollars, and both of those factors are impacted by payment processing.

BAMS is the ultimate payment processing partner for small businesses like yours because we enable you to give your customers the payment options they want, help you streamline their payment experience, and help you pad your bottom line in the process. Here are just a few of the benefits partnering with BAMS can provide to your supermarket.

BAMS Can Help Increase Your Sales

Studies have shown that people paying with credit cards are willing to spend more money than when paying with cash. The reason is that a tap or swipe of the credit card is perceived as far less painful than handing over cold, hard cash. That means people paying with cards are both more likely to spend more money as a whole, and are also more likely to indulge in near-the-checkout impulse purchases.

That has huge implications for your supermarket, the most obvious being that if you aren’t already accepting credit cards, you’re leaving money on the table. Aside from this well-researched consumer behavior, accepting credit cards just makes sense, since fewer and fewer people are carrying cash at all as consumer payment habits move further towards plastic with each passing year.

BAMS Can Help Reduce Your Fees

If you are currently accepting credit card payments, there’s a good chance you’re either using a third-party provider like Square, or that you just signed on with your bank because you thought they’d be the best rate available. In both of those cases, the odds are that the fees you’re paying on each transaction are higher than they need to be.

At BAMS, we’ve developed an industry leading five-step price comparison designed specifically to determine how and where we can save you money before providing you with a detailed quote. That way, you can be absolutely certain that partnering with BAMS is the right move not only for your peace of mind but for your wallet as well.

BAMS Can Help Streamline Your Tracking and Reporting

BAMS does more than just process payments; it also provides a full suite of tools to help you better manage your business, including detailed tracking and reporting on all of your transaction handling. BAMS also comes with access to IRIS CRM, a leading customer resource management tool that can help you streamline almost all aspects of your business.

These tools allow you to minimize monotonous and time-consuming housekeeping tasks so that you can focus more on growing your business and serving the customers and community that depend on your grocery store and drive your sales.

At BAMS, our goal is to enable you to offer your customers the credit card and debit payment options they expect while cutting your costs and making card payments more profitable for you. We’d love the opportunity to show you how BAMS can benefit your supermarket the same way it’s benefited thousands of businesses all over the world, so give us a call today to find out more.

April 9, 2019

Does Your Business Really Need A Merchant Services Account?

Whether you’re a start-up or an established business, at some point you’re going to be faced with the decision of how to accept electronic payments and whether or not to apply for a merchant services account. That can be a tough choice, as there are a lot of misconceptions surrounding merchant accounts, from the difficulty of approval to their usefulness to different kinds of businesses.

While some businesses find a way to get by without one, most companies will eventually come to the decision that a merchant account is the right choice for them, and with good reason. The alternatives that exist, while serviceable, aren’t ideal, and the benefits to be gained from a merchant account are hard to ignore.

The Alternative: Third-Party Processors

The first and most obvious alternative to accepting card payments through a merchant account is not accepting card payments at all. That’s a bad choice, and most serious businesses would never even consider not offering customers some sort of plastic option. The other alternative is third-party processors, and while these are a popular choice for some much smaller businesses, they’re not a good choice for companies doing any real volume.

PayPal is probably the most well-known example of a third-party processor. PayPal allows members to accept credit card payments, but those payments are processed through PayPal’s master merchant account, with the company acting as a middle-man. As with any middle-man, they make their money by tacking on additional fees. Those fees aren’t insignificant, and they make third-party processors fairly expensive on a transaction-by-transaction basis.

The Benefits of a Merchant Account

While a merchant account isn’t technically necessary to accept credit payments, compared to the alternatives, there are some major benefits to having one. They include both the financial benefits that a merchant account offers, as well as the less obvious, but equally important benefit of lending credibility to your business.

Financial benefits:

The first major financial benefit is that having a merchant account makes your business more accessible to your customers, and that can only be a good thing. With each new generation, cash becomes more and more obsolete, and card payments become more and more the norm. Your customers want to pay you with cards, and, generally speaking, when someone wants to give you money, you should let them!

The second financial benefit is that a merchant account is almost certainly the cheapest option you’ll have access to for accepting card payments. That doesn’t mean all merchant accounts and payment processors are created equal, and you should shop around very carefully when deciding who to sign on with. But compared with the alternatives, a merchant account is generally your most cost-effective bet on a per-transaction basis.

Trust benefits:

Perception is reality, and if a customer perceives your business in a negative light, there’s a good chance you’re going to lose the sale. When you accept payments through a third-party processor, it generally requires customers to be redirected from your website to the processor’s website. That can be a jarring experience in the middle of a transaction, and it can easily cause a customer to abandon their purchase altogether.

A merchant account allows you to accept secure, PCI compliant payments directly through your website, under your own familiar branding, and without any scary redirects. That’s the experience that consumers expect from well-established, reputable merchants, and it can’t be overstated how far it can go in reinforcing the trust between merchant and customer.

BAMS provides merchant services to thousands of businesses across the globe, and 98% of our client merchants report lower stress levels when working with a BAMS merchant account. That’s because we go out of our way to ensure your payment processing experience is as easy as possible – from getting your account set-up, to ensuring PCI compliance, to accepting payments, reporting, and beyond.

June 21, 2018

3 Ways the Right Merchant Services Help You Keep a Positive Cash Flow

NY Merchant Services concept. Young startup entrepreneur small business owner working at home, packaging and delivery situation.

Merchant services play a large role in your business. They help you collect revenue, but they also impact your expenses. Find the right company that doesn’t disrupt your cash flow.

1. Reliable services let you know future merchant service rates.

Every business needs a forecasted budget. A great deal of effort in the business world is focused on how to record and predict revenue. But expenses are just as important. Fixed expenses are the best type of expenses for a business, but merchant services don’t fall under that category. The total grows along with your revenue, and additional fees can add up.

So make sure you merchant services provider is as transparent as possible. You need to know the rates down to the last decimal point, and they need to be numbers you can rely on without having to anticipate surprise rate changes.

2. You get the money in your account faster.

Different merchant services have different processes. Some companies send you back the funds after a few days, and it can take even longer for purchases that were processed after their office hours. Look for a merchant service that offers tight turnaround for purchases during work hours, late at night, and on the weekends. If your company has bills you need to pay, you need to have the cash on hand to do it.

3. You don’t receive unexpected chargebacks.

Credit card companies protect their customers, not merchants and stores. That means customers have an increasing number of ways to get their money back after a credit card purchase. Sometimes it’s a legitimate return, and other times it’s a sincere complaint about an unwanted charge. But sometimes it’s less than honest. No matter what the motivation behind the chargeback, you need to know about it so you can respond quickly. Chargebacks are becoming more frequent, and they can quickly eat into your cash flow.

Go to BAMS to find merchant services that are predictable, process funds quickly, and keep you updated.

March 20, 2018

Modernize Your Site with E-Commerce Processing

If you sell products from a physical store, you might be missing out on an entire other sales channel: the internet. Today’s customers expect even physical stores to be able to offer certain e-commerce features from their sites, and if these aren’t available, the stores seem behind on the times. Here are a few essentials your store’s site should have:

Site to Store

With this feature, customers order online, but pick their items up at your store’s service counter or other designated areas. Your staff does the job of picking it all off the shelves and boxing or bagging it, but you don’t worry about shipping it anywhere. This makes things quick and easy for the customer and increases your chance of making sales, while you are saved from dealing with logistics.

Pre-Orders

If you routinely get hot new items, give your customers the chance to lock in their copies by ordering in advance of arrival. Offering the ability to make pre-orders will please your customers, but more importantly, it’ll let you get a better idea of how many units to buy for release day and how hot the item will be overall.

Of course, getting set up to offer these services requires your site to have a few essentials. One of these is a merchant processing account. To get set up with an affordable option that includes a free Authorize.net gateway, just contact us!

Here at BAMS, we are happy to answer any of your questions and help you get started!

February 26, 2018

Why a Local NYC Merchant Services Provider is a Good Option

New York City is one of the biggest cities in the world and is the home to many businesses of all sizes. For those that are based out of New York City, having access to a local merchant services provider would be very beneficial. There are several different benefits of hiring a New York City merchant services provider that can make it the best option for your business.

Payment Processing

One of the main benefits of having your merchant services provider be local is that they can provide you with quick payment processing. Today, the majority of all purchases are either made online or in a store using a credit card. This can create a bit of a cash flow problem for businesses as it can be a few days before they actually receive the cash from the credit card provider. When you use a local NYC merchant services provider, this wait time can be cut down dramatically. In many situations, you can actually receive your payment the next business day.

Quick Onsite Assistance

Another benefit of hiring a local merchant services provider is that they will be able to provide you with onsite assistance when necessary. While merchant services programs tend to work very well, there are situations in which you will need further assistance to either learn the system or troubleshoot a problem. While you can have some of these situations handled over the phone, it is normally much easier and efficient to have them handled in person. When you hire a local provider, they will be able to have a professional sent to your place of business quickly.

Due to the benefits of hiring a local merchant services provider, you should contact us to learn more about the services and benefits that we could provide to your organization.

February 18, 2018

Get Your Money Faster with a BAMS Merchant Account

Writing on whiteboard a lightbulb and currency symbols (next day funding concept).

The one thing better than getting money is getting it faster. It used to be that with merchant accounts, getting your transaction money in the bank in 24 hours was considered fast. After all, there are still a few companies out there that take 3 days! Now, however, even 24 hours is slow. That’s because it’s possible to have the money in your account in just 12 hours.

More Business Flexibility

This is the main practical benefit of a 12-hour turnaround from transaction to funding. Transactions done in the morning can fund your inventory orders or pay your other bills that same night. This is great for just-in-time business models or for unexpected, urgent expenses.

Most of the time, however, the desire for faster payouts doesn’t arise from a specific plan. Instead, people inherently understand that they’re better off when there is less delay in funding. Then, when the time comes that money is needed right away, it’s there. It’s also always nicer to see your money in your bank account instead of pending on a merchant account screen.

Regardless of your reason for wanting faster payment settlement, our 12-hour funding merchant account has you covered. We also offer many other benefits with our accounts, like a free Authorize.net gateway and lower fees. This makes switching to a BAMS account a great business decision all around.

To eliminate the long wait for funding and cut your overall payment processing costs, just contact us today. We’ll be happy to get you set up with a superior merchant account right away.

January 31, 2018

Should You Choose the Lowest-Priced Merchant Services?

Compass with needle pointing the word best price. Merchant services concept

One of the hardest decisions to make as a merchant is which payment processing service to use. Most have arcane fee structures that make it hard to tell exactly what you’ll pay. There’s the discount rate, the transaction fee, the statement fee, and more. Even worse, some of the fee names are the opposite of what they sound like or are otherwise confusing.

Even with all of these nebulous terms, sufficient searching will eventually lead you to one or more merchant services that are clearly cheaper than the rest. The deal may seem so great that you wonder if there’s a catch! It’s almost impossible to find out just from the advertising, but the answer is “sometimes.”

Be Wary of “Just for You” Offers

When you get the contract to sign up for merchant services, be wary of clauses that indicate a much higher rate than what the salesperson tells you. Also be careful of high fees for canceling your account, adding or removing locations, and other such things. At the time you sign up, you might be told that the fees are waived “for you.” Don’t believe it. When you make a major change, expect the fees to be charged to your bank account – and to have to vehemently argue to get them removed.

Look for High-Quality Providers

Good providers have good reviews, a professional attitude, and a straightforward fee structure. You won’t be given a contract that says one thing and has a “waiver” written in by the salesperson. In short, a high-quality merchant services provider should present itself as one.

Once you find some candidates, then go through their fees and choose the ones with the lowest prices. By putting quality first, you’ll avoid bad companies and still save money on your payment processing fees.

For a merchant account that offers you great rates with no tricks, just contact us. We’ll be glad to serve your payment processing needs.

January 11, 2018

How Next Day Funding Can Help Your Business

Old Way or New Way on Chalkboard. Next day funding concept

Providing customers with the ability to pay for a product or service with a credit card is an incredible service that could result in far greater revenues for the business. However, when you sell a product with a credit card, you often are not able to receive your actual payment for up to 72 hours due to slow processing times. Fortunately, there is a service that can provide you with your money from a sale within 12 hours. This can benefit a company a number of different ways.

Better Cash Flow

One of the main advantages of next day funding is that it can greatly improve your cash flow and revenue cycle. One of the most important responsibilities that all businesses share is the need to properly manage cash flow. When you receive your revenue within 12 hours, you will be able to reduce your reliance on lines of credit and can pay your vendors sooner. This can ultimately improve your reputation and reduce your borrowing costs.

Automation

Another advantage of providing next day funding is that it often comes with better automation as well. Providers of next day funding will also typically provide you with other services that can also improve collections. This can include automated invoices, payment reminders, and other services that can get you paid more consistently and on time.

If you are looking for ways to improve your cash flow processes and collection systems, taking advantage of next day funding services could be a great option. You should contact us to learn more about how next day funding could help you.

January 5, 2018

Why You Should Hire a NYC Merchant Services Provider

Young woman using a digital tablet with local NYC merchant services while working in a coffee shop

For any business that accepts credit card payments, having access to a company that can provide merchant services is very important. For those that are located in the New York City area, hiring a NYC merchant services provider could be a great decision. There are several advantages of having a merchant service provider that is located near your place of business.

Accessibility

One reason why you should hire a local merchant services provider is that they will be far more accessible. While merchant services systems and processes are very reliable, there are bound to be some issues or questions that arise. When you have a provider that is located near your place of business, they will be able to quickly come to your location to ensure the issue is addressed and fixed. This can allow your business to get back up and running in no time and make you more efficient overall.

Same Time Zone

Another reason why you should have a local merchant service provider is that they are located in the same time zone. If you have a merchant services provider that is located overseas, or even in a different area of the country, they will likely operate on a different time than you. This means that they may not be able to process some of your orders until the following day. This can end up causing a cash flow delay and increase your interest costs if you have a line of credit.

If you are in need of merchant services, contact us to learn more about all of the services that we could provide to your business.