Written by Craig Peterson, Vice President of Business Development for TenderCard
The gift card industry continues to grow at very fast pace, more than doubling in less than 3 years. Gift cards have replaced the old paper gift certificate. Gift card companies are now creating programs that cater to the small to medium size [...]
From time to time I review the search terms and phrases that being people to this blog to get ideas for posts. Today one of the first search phrases was “are you allowed to have two merchant accounts?” So here is a quick answer to that question – yes.
We have many clients that [...]
It seems almost every day I get an email or a tweet asking me if my company, Cocard Synergy, has a better solution for accepting credit cards than PayPal. I have reviewed the fees of PayPal merchants accounts many times but I am always left feeling like I am not receiving the full story from [...]
Yesterday I saw the traffic of this blog triple and I had no idea why. I did a little research and I found out the Los Angles Times mentioned the term “straigh pass through” in a business focused column written by Karen E. Klein yesterday. You an go here to see the column [...]
As you may know, I review business merchant account statements on regular basis. One thing I keep seeing more and more on statements are terms like “Annual Compliance Service Fee” or “PCI Compliance Program.” The shocking thing about these fees is how much they are; I have a statement on my desk that [...]
I had planned to write this post several months ago but we have been so incredibly busy that I had to put this on the back burner. So finally, here is a summary of the key changes that occurred in October to Interchange from Visa, MasterCard:
Master Card
Change #1 – MasterCard will no longer require [...]
I just added a new client that uses QuickBooks Pro 2008 to run their transactions. They were setup with Quickbooks Merchant Services because they thought they had no other choice. Just to make sure that was the case they went searching on the internet and came across this blog. They [...]
Do you or one of your clients operate a supermarket? Is so, there are a few things you should know that could result in some significant savings on merchant account fees. Here is the list:
1. Visa has lower Interchange rates for consumer cards used at a supermarket:
TRANACTION TYPE
RETAIL
SUPERMARKET
Swiped Consumer Card
1.54% + $.10
1.24% + [...]
If you haven’t watched part one of of this two part series go here to watch the first video.
The theme of part two of this series is that there is much more than just price to pay attention to when shopping for a merchant account. Watch the video and take a look at my [...]
I just ran across an article written by an executive at Global Payments about Interchange Plus. It was written for people who are inside the merchant account industry. In the article he concludes that Interchange Plus pricing is not the best thing for merchant account providers, for several reasons including a reduction in [...]
Watch this video to here a different poi of view on merchant account early termination penalties. Let us know what you think by sharing your thoughts in the comment section below.
Watch this video to learn about changes to Interchange coming in October and why, if you have a merchant account with tiers (qualified, mid-qualified and non-qualified), it is time to switch your account to an Interchange Plus price model.
Check back here in the next few days for more specifics on the coming changes to Interchange.
A Third Party Processor is an independent processor that is contracted with by a Acquiring Bank or Processor to conduct some part of the transaction processing process.
-Some of these Third Party Processors specialize in running and hosting networks of Point Of Sale (POS) terminals connected to their Host via dial out modem; they produce the [...]
Watch this video and read this post to learn what to look for and ask when you are shopping for a merchant account.
What watch out for:
Super low discount rates – the lower the advertised rate is the greater your effective rate typically will be.
Free terminals or gateways – in business nothing is free in the [...]
Case Study – Winery
Business Type: Napa Valley Winery (specific name withheld)
Initial Status: To the untrained eye this merchant account statement looked just fine; here are a few of the problems that stood out to me:
One merchant account for both their tasting room and wine club
25% of there Visa transactions going to a “non-qualified” status
Transactions being [...]
