Category: Best Practices for Merchants
April 8th, 2016 by Elma Jane
Mobile payments are soaring high. Many large retailers have embraced the innovation, but individual business owners have been slower to adopt.
Mobile payments can enhance customer engagement and loyalty. With mobile payment features, businesses can encourage more people to purchase using their mobile phone.
Customer experience will be the primary basis for competition.
The success of mobile payment providers and vendors are ultimately connected, as both need to work together. Small business merchants may not feel the urgent need to adopt mobile payments today, but they might lose in the near future as consumers nowadays use their mobile devices to pay for goods and services.
Small business merchants may not feel the urgent need to adopt mobile payments today, but they might be left behind in the near future as consumers nowadays use their mobile devices to pay for goods and services.
Competitive businesses need to get on board, they need to know the advantages and opportunities mobile payments can provide. To stay competitive and relevant, business merchants of all sectors and sizes need to explore the possibilities of mobile payments.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Mobile Payments, Travel Agency Agents Tagged with: consumers, customer, merchants, mobile, Mobile Payments, payment providers, payments, provider's
April 7th, 2016 by Elma Jane
The EMV technology does improve security because EMV cards are more difficult to counterfeit. Since U.S. is using chip-and-signature cards not the one requiring a PIN, anybody can use an EMV chip card whether it might be a lost or a stolen card. EMV chips will not prevent the data breach from occurring, but it will make it harder for criminals to successfully profit from what they steal.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit Card Security, EMV EuroPay MasterCard Visa Tagged with: cards, chip card, data, EMV, PIN, Security
April 4th, 2016 by Elma Jane
Accept Payments Your Way – In-Person, Online, and On The Go
Keeping up with customer demands and growing your business can be challenging. With NTC’s payments platform, you can process payments from customers quickly and securely, whether in-person, online or on the go. NTC can help you manage it all in one place, easily, securely and cost effectively.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants Tagged with: customer, online, payments
April 4th, 2016 by Elma Jane
Visa
- Visa is introducing updates to their dispute process.
- Visa is introducing reduced timeframes for transaction processing and late presentment.
- Visa is eliminating the “Call Auth” referral responses, replacing them with Approved or Declined responses.
MasterCard
- MasterCard is adjusting some chargeback reason codes.
- MasterCard is introducing new standards for processing authorizations and pre-authorizations.
- MasterCard is introducing new auth reversal fees.
Discover
- Discover is introducing ProtectBuy for e-commerce transactions.
- Discover is modifying recurring payment interchange programs.
American Express
- American Express is introducing new MCC codes.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, e-commerce & m-commerce, Visa MasterCard American Express Tagged with: e-commerce, payment, transactions
March 31st, 2016 by Elma Jane
E-commerce – the process of using the Internet or computer networks in order to buy or sell information, services, or products.
Everyday people go on the Internet and make purchases for different products or services, just like they would in a store. The act of buying or selling over these networks allows for secure paperless transactions to happen electronically.
Electronic transactions have been around for quite some time involving business to business transactions over private networks in the form of EDI. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), which was a transfer of electronic data from a computer to another computer and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), which was a transfer of money electronically from a computer to another in order to do business with each other.
Accepting online payments is very rewarding. If you’re new to e-commerce keep things simple check out our NTC e-Pay the NO SHOPPING CART E-Commerce Solution!
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, e-commerce & m-commerce Tagged with: e-commerce, Electronic Data, electronic transactions, online payments, payments, transactions
March 31st, 2016 by Elma Jane
Two key features have been released in the latest version (1.2.) of the Converge Mobile app for both iOS and Android:
- Bluetooth Printer Support – You can now use either of the Bluetooth printers – Star SM-T300i or Star SM-T220i – with the Converge Mobile app.
- Void – You can now void a transaction after it has been submitted and before it has been settled. Transactions that need to be reversed after settlement will need to be done as a refund. Both the Void and Refund functions are done from the transaction menu.
In addition to these features, enhancements were made to the first-time user experience to help get customers up and running on the new mobile app. Several bug fixes were also addressed, including a fix to remedy an issue where some cards were not being accepted via Apple Pay.
Users must download the latest version of the Converge Mobile app to receive these latest features. Updating the app will also push a hardware update to the Ingenico iCMP. We encourage our customers to enable automatic updates for Converge Mobile so you will always have the latest functionality.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants Tagged with: customers, mobile, transaction
March 24th, 2016 by Elma Jane
Dear Virtuoso:
I wanted to praise one of our Virtuoso partners, National Transactions.
We have found National Transactions to be a wonderful partner. We have gotten excellent rates and support for our National Transaction merchant account– but more than that, their employees have helped us improve our processes, and I can already see our productivity rising. We have begun a new, online payment portal. This is an excellent tool we highly recommend!
National Transaction’s Steve Garlenski assisted and John Barbieri custom-designed a fabulous landing page – with all of our terms and conditions, cancellation penalties and places to check to authorize — and automatic receipt sent to both us and the client.
We really appreciate all they have done to help us with this important tool. It is so much better, faster and easier for us than obtaining signed paper credit card authorizations.
Thank you, Steve & John and National Transactions!
————–
Eleanor Hardy
President
The Society of International Railway Travelers®
Proud members of Virtuoso®
#1 Sellers of Virtuoso® Adventure & Specialty Travel, 2012
Winner, 15 Magellan Awards for Excellence
Celebrating the World’s Top 25 Trains since 1983
We thrive on referrals. Please tell your friends.
Web: http://www.irtsociety.com
Facebook | IRT Blog, Track 25
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Travel Agency Agents Tagged with: credit card, merchant, merchant account, online payment, travel
March 23rd, 2016 by Elma Jane
Mar 21, 2016 at 2:14 AM
Hi Gloria, Cathy & Bill,
I want to thank the National Transaction Corp team for Gloria’s excellent help last week regarding a repeatedly declined transaction – which the customer insisted should go through. With Gloria’s assistance and information, our customer finally acknowledged there were insufficient funds and gave us a new card to run instead. The joy of dealing with the public!
In the bigger picture, her help that day is typical of the wonderful service your whole team consistently provides. When I call periodically, it’s because there’s a problem… and it’s usually about money… and it’s usually “the other guy’s” fault!
Your team always goes to bat cheerfully and gets results for us. In this age of electronic switchboards and giant financial institutions, I’m amazed at the personal attention and speedy resolution your team always delivers.
We get cold calls from banks or card processors almost every week promising better rates or some “great deal” to handle our transactions. Before they can explain their offer, I tell them I’m already working with friends in the business and hang up as quickly as possible.
You’ve earned my business and loyalty and I can’t say enough good things about your service. Thank you for all you do!
Sincerely, George
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Travel Agency Agents Tagged with: card, customer, service
March 23rd, 2016 by Elma Jane
A data breach can occur from inside a business just as much as it can externally. The one common element between both is “Opportunity.” It doesn’t matter whether a business is a multi-national corporation or a small single-location.
Attacks from criminals can range in sophistication. While the sophistication of some attacks may be low, experts note that criminals continue to evolve their techniques and now they are becoming more sophisticated than ever.
While large corporations may have millions of customer records, they also maintain the resources to protect their sensitive information from the average criminal. It may take weeks, months, or even years for a criminal to penetrate the defenses of one large corporation. This is why attacks on small business are becoming so attractive to criminals.
It all goes back to the “Opportunity.” The average small business lacks the resources to properly protect their business from the variety of attacks at the disposal of criminals. Or worse, they may believe their business is of no interest to criminals. The fact is, they are less secure than larger businesses. These are all issues for the average small business owner, and more importantly, their customers.
So what can a small business do to protect themselves from the growing threat of a data compromise?
- Background checks on employees.
- Have someone monitor the network activity.
- Protect business with proper network security protocols.
- Protect your payment’s environment by using a layered approach that includes EMV, encryption and tokenization to help prevent sensitive payment card data from being stolen.
These are all fairly simple and inexpensive ways for businesses to help protect themselves and their customers from being a victim of a costly data compromise.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit Card Security, Travel Agency Agents Tagged with: card, customer, data, data breach, EMV, encryption, payment, Security, tokenization