Check payments are so 1970s. The 1970s called. It wants its checks back. What’s longer than an EMV transaction at checkout? Paying by check. We’ve heard all the jokes and references how check payments are outdated. We’ve also heard all the misconceptions that checks are becoming obsolete. We disagree emphatically. Checks, especially digital and virtual,…
Blog
Merchant Account Fees: Why We Charge What We Charge
On a typical workday, we’ll take 60-80 phone calls, e-mails and live chats asking what our merchant account fees might be for this industry or that business. We wish it was a simple, one-size-fits-all answer, but it’s far from it. Frankly, we don’t know. E-commerce businesses are like fingerprints or snowflakes: They’re all unique. Hence,…
Our Process for Offering High Risk Credit Card Processing
We don’t offer high risk credit card processing to every merchant who contacts us. Far from it. In fact, we probably turn away between 15-20 percent of the more than 100 inquiries we receive each week for a number of reasons: The merchant poses too high a risk — we cannot find a solution. Volume…
Why Cross Border Acquiring Has Become More Difficult
If you are finding it more difficult to get an offshore merchant account, you’re not imagining things. Recent regulation changes from Visa have made the cross border acquiring process a little more complicated for merchants who want or need to process transactions through an offshore bank. Complicated, but certainly not impossible. The cross border acquiring…
What Merchants Need to Know About Pharming
Roughly one year ago, I had read an excellent article about transaction laundering, the use of legitimate-looking websites to peddle illegal or illicit goods. I searched for more material on the subject, and before I knew it, I was writing my own for The Green Sheet, a payments industry magazine to which I contribute. Sometimes…
Communication, Courtesy: This Should be Your Return Policy
Of all the gifts I bought my wife this Christmas, she ended up returning one: Ugg pajamas. The process was as efficient as it gets because of Ugg’s excellent return policy. In fact, Ugg shipped the pajamas as if it expected that I would return them: I received a prepaid shipping label, packaging and contact…
E-Commerce Fraud Prevention: Who is Taking it Seriously?
The occurrence of data breaches increased by 40 percent from 2015 to 2016 according to a joint study from the Identity Theft Resource Center and CyberScout. How that figure will read this time next year is unknown. What is known is that this is the standard in which consumers shop and merchants safeguard their businesses.…
3 Ways Consumer Influence is More Powerful Than Ever
We’re still on our customer service rant from Tuesday’s blog. While I was going on about my disappointing experience with a local appliance store, it got me thinking about a few things regarding the consumer-merchant relationship: Primarily, how consumer influence is more powerful than ever. Before the internet, consumers had rather limited choices when they…
My Faith in Quality Customer Service is Running Low
There has been a movement in my town over the last decade encouraging consumers to support local businesses. My family and I are on board completely. We do our best to buy local, year-round. Sometimes we pay a little more for something, but we don’t mind a bit. Recently, however, we were forced to side…