January 17th, 2023 by Admin
Mobile payment processing is getting heated competition as priority in the electronic payment industry begins to shift. Retailers and restaurants are switching to cheaper solutions like smartphones and tablets linked to a mobile point of sale system or MPOS. These MPOS applications have devices that connect to a smartphone or tablet via Bluetooth wireless interfaces or through a standard headphone jack on the device. Read more of this article »
Posted in Mobile Payments Tagged with: bluetooth, Chip and PIN, EMV, gift Card, Mobile Payments, MPOS, nfc, PayPal, QR Code Payments, retailers, smartphone, Square, tablet, Tap to Pay
August 7th, 2014 by Elma Jane
Bill Me Later Is Now PayPal Credit, PayPal Working Capital Exceeds $150 Million and Both are Going Global. Delivering flexible and convenient credit products is something. Bill Me Later with eBay (PayPal), a vision to make shopping and paying easy, flexible and convenient. Announcing the evolution of Bill Me Later to PayPal Credit and the exceptional growth of PayPal Working Capital a global portfolio of credit solutions that help people and businesses leap forward.
PayPal Credit Evolves and Plans to Expand to the UK and Germany
As people and businesses know and trust the PayPal name, this is a natural and logical brand transformation. It also demonstrates how credit are moving more towards the center of the business, aligning it more closely with overall brand and working as a partner with businesses to spur growth. Customers and merchants across the pond have been asking for the flexibility and convenience of PayPal Credit in their markets, today they’re also announcing the plan to introduce PayPal Credit to the UK and Germany. People will begin to see PayPal in places they haven’t seen before, allowing shoppers to easily make purchases with financial flexibility.
Since the pilot program launched last September, more than 20,000 businesses have collectively borrowed more than $150 million in PayPal Working Capital business loans through their lending partner, WebBank. The program is also expanding to the UK and Australia to fuel business growth. Businesses in these countries will have access to capital in minutes once they apply and are approved through a simple online interface. PayPal Working Capital allows these businesses to repay with a share of their sales they choose, and don’t repay on days they don’t have sales. The program uses a business’s sales history, there is no credit check or extensive documentation required. The loan charges a single, affordable fixed fee instead of periodic interest so businesses know the cost of the loan up front. Offering these products more broadly is a sign of the power that credit brings to both merchants and consumers. Merchants can leverage credit as a tool to secure capital and grow their businesses. Additionally, they can offer credit with flexible payments options for their customers and immediate sales, while consumers experience freedom of choice when buying what they want when they want it.
Posted in Merchant Account Services News Articles Tagged with: Bill Me Later, business loans, capital, credit check, credit products, credit solutions, customers, ebay, fee, financial flexibility, global portfolio, Merchant's, PayPal, PayPal Credit, periodic interest
July 21st, 2014 by Elma Jane
PayPal has begun testing a new loyalty program called PayPal Select that seeks to promote use of the digital-payments network by offering more rewards for its most active members. The program launched by invitation only based on users’ history on PayPal and follows by about 18 months the cancellation PayPal’s previous loyalty program, PayPal Advantage. As PayPal looks to continue to build its volume of use on mobile devices off of eBay, driving repeat use and loyalty will be key. The challenges for the offer part will be the same as any other deal/offer program – namely the quality of the offers and inbox-offer fatigue. Like any big-screen concept that gets downscaled onto mobile, there is the challenge of how to hook people in the first couple of screens. CreditCall is not involved with PayPal Select. The payment platform is a division of San Jose, CA-based online auction giant eBay. It offers both a mobile app and an m-dot site for mobile payments.
Posted in Mobile Payments, Smartphone Tagged with: CreditCall, digital-payments network, ebay, loyalty program, m-dot site, mobile, mobile app, Mobile Devices, Mobile Payments, PayPal, PayPal Advantage, PayPal Select, rewards
June 19th, 2014 by Elma Jane
API Software Inc. has created an application ISOs can use to help merchants tabulate the best payment services deals. The Square Deal Pro app for the merchant services industry enables sales reps to compare their company’s rates to those of Square, PayPal, Stripe and other payments aggregators. Essentially, the application takes the mathematics burden off of the merchant and helps an ISO or agent compare bundled pricing with interchange-plus pricing.
Frank Haggar, a software developer, started asking merchants why they chose a certain provider and they just said the pricing was simpler. It might be more expensive, but it was easier for them to understand. That moved to develop Square Deal Pro. It’s a software that salespeople can have right on their phones and it makes a comparison and is easy to understand. Square Deal Pro, which operates on iPhones, Android devices and Windows phones, was established as a vendor-neutral tool that is also available for merchants to download if they were inclined to want to crunch numbers themselves. Service providers pay for the application and all of its sales features, but a free version for price comparisons only is available to merchants.
Merchants are experts in what they know how to do and they may not want something that includes math distracting them from that, but the sales rep can do it for them and use it along the lines of a calculator helping someone figure out mortgage rates. ISOs have various tools at their disposal and lock in key information in their brains to prepare for sales presentations, but most will likely find Square Deal Pro a valuable addition. Something that takes complicated pricing schemes and factors it all into an easy interface that puts out a clear comparison that is valuable, certainly out in the field.
API Software has to deliver something difficult or impossible to copy because that would set this permanently apart as opposed to being a lead to other similar products in the market. An ISO can change rates or make adjustments for a client if the numbers show that another provider is offering a less expensive option, but the numbers in the app don’t lie. The app will show how a bundled rate can work in your favor, such as if you are selling Girl Scouts cookies at $3 a box. Then use Square all day long, but an ISO can compare how his product works compared to others and the app can show, that at a certain time, it might be beneficial to switch over.
Square Deal Pro takes into account factors other than interchange rates, including merchant volume, average ticket price and whether transactions are keyed or swiped or both. All of those things determine where you fit in on the diagram of how your rate should be structured. There is a lot of analysis on minimal focal points. The application may also help defuse potential problems with merchants who sometimes feel their sales rep was not providing a fair assessment of pricing structure or comparisons.
As for the application’s name, Haggar doesn’t want any confusion over whether this might be a new Square product.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants Tagged with: account, aggregators, Android, assessment, bundled pricing, developer, devices, interchange, interchange rates, interchange-plus pricing, iPhones, ISOs, market, merchant services, merchant volume, Merchant's, mortgage rates, payment, PayPal, phones, pricing, Pro app, products, provider, Rates, sales, Service providers, software, Square, Square Deal Pro app, Stripe, transactions, Windows phones
June 10th, 2014 by Elma Jane
David Marcus, president of eBay Inc.’s PayPal division, plans to leave the payments company to join Facebook Inc. The move is effective June 27. Marcus will oversee the social network’s messaging products division, including the Facebook Messenger app, which lets users send messages to their friends. Marcus had been in his position at PayPal since April 2012. Prior to working for eBay, he was founder and CEO of Zong, a mobile payments provider for gaming and social networking companies that eBay acquired in August 2011. As the head of PayPal, David helped make a great business better, reinvigorating product design and innovation and energizing the team to deliver compelling consumer experiences. Making the move was a difficult decision, Marcus writes in a Facebook post. After much deliberation, I decided now is the right time for me to move on to something that is closer to what I love to do every day. Facebook says it processes 12 billion messages daily and its Messenger smartphone app which consumers can use independently of Facebook even though it is integrated with the social network has more than 200 million users. We’re excited by the potential to continue developing great new messaging experiences that better serve the Facebook community and reach even more people and David will be leading these efforts. Marcus will oversee the social network’s messaging products division, which includes Facebook’s Messenger app. The mobile app has more than 200 million users.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: eBay Inc., Facebook Inc, Facebook Messenger app, Messenger smartphone app, mobile app, Mobile Payments, mobile payments provider, payments company, PayPal, smartphone app
May 21st, 2014 by Elma Jane
Mobile credit card processing is way cheaper than traditional point-of-sale (POS) systems. Accepting credit cards using mobile devices is stressful, not to mention a hassle to set up and customers would never dare compromise security by saving or swiping their credit cards on a mobile device. Some of the many myths surrounding mobile payments, which allow merchants to process credit card payments using smartphones and tablets. Merchants process payments using a physical credit card reader attached to a mobile device or by scanning previously stored credit card information from a mobile app, as is the case with mobile wallets. Benefits include convenience, a streamlined POS system and access to a breadth of business opportunities based on collected consumer data. Nevertheless, mobile payments as a whole remains a hotly debated topic among retailers, customers and industry experts alike.
Although mobile payment adoption has been slow, consumers are steadily shifting their preferences as an increasing number of merchants implement mobile payment technologies (made easier and more accessible by major mobile payment players such as Square and PayPal). To stay competitive, it’s more important than ever for small businesses to stay current and understand where mobile payment technology is heading.
If you’re considering adopting mobile payments or are simply curious about the technology, here are mobile payment myths that you may have heard, but are completely untrue.
All rates are conveniently the same. Thanks to the marketing of big players like Square and PayPal – which are not actually credit card processors, but aggregators rates can vary widely and significantly. For instance, consider that the average debit rate is 1.35 percent. Square’s is 2.75 percent and PayPal Here’s is 2.7 percent, so customers will have to pay an additional 1.41 percent and 1.35 percent, respectively, using these two services. Some cards also get charged well over 4 percent, such as foreign rewards cards. These companies profit & mobile customers lose. Always read the fine print.
Credit card information is stored on my mobile device after a transaction. Good mobile developers do not store any critical information on the device. That information should only be transferred through an encrypted, secure handshake between the application and the processor. No information should be stored or left hanging around following the transaction.
I already have a POS system – the hassle isn’t worth it. Mobile payments offer more flexibility to reach the customer than ever before. No longer are sales people tied to a cash register and counters to finish the sale. That flexibility can mean the difference between revenue and a lost sale. Mobile payments also have the latest technology to track sales, log revenue, fight chargebacks, and analyze performance quickly and easily.
If we build it, they will come. Many wallet providers believe that if you simply build a new mobile payment method into the phones, consumers will adopt it as their new wallet. This includes proponents of NFC technology, QR codes, Bluetooth and other technologies, but given very few merchants have the POS systems to accept these new types of technologies, consumers have not adopted. Currently, only 6.6 percent of merchants can accept NFC, and even less for QR codes or BLE technology, hence the extremely slow adoption rate. Simply put, the new solutions are NOT convenient, and do not replace consumers’ existing wallets, not even close.
It raises the risk of fraud. Fraud’s always a concern. However, since data isn’t stored on the device for Square and others, the data is stored on their servers, the risk is lessened. For example, there’s no need for you to fear one of your employees walking out with your tablet and downloading all of your customers’ info from the tablet. There’s also no heightened fraud risk for data loss if a tablet or mobile device is ever sold.
Mobile processing apps are error-free. Data corruption glitches do happen on wireless mobile devices. A merchant using mobile credit card processing apps needs to be more diligent to review their mobile processing transactions. Mobile technology is fantastic when it works.
Mobile wallets are about to happen. They aren’t about to happen, especially in developed markets like the U.S. It took 60 years to put in the banking infrastructure we have today and it will take years for mobile wallets to achieve critical mass here.
Setup is difficult and complicated. Setting up usually just involves downloading the vendor’s app and following the necessary steps to get the hardware and software up and running. The beauty of modern payment solutions is that like most mobile apps, they are built to be user-friendly and intuitive so merchants would have little trouble setting them up. Most mobile payment providers offer customer support as well, so you can always give them a call in the unlikely event that you have trouble setting up the system.
The biggest business opportunity in the mobile payments space is in developed markets. While most investments and activity in the Mobile Point of Sale space take place today in developed markets (North America and Western Europe), the largest opportunity is actually in emerging markets where most merchants are informal and by definition can’t get a merchant account to accept card payments. Credit and debit card penetration is higher in developed markets, but informal merchants account for the majority of payments volume in emerging markets and all those transactions are conducted in cash today.
Wireless devices are unreliable. Reliability is very often brought up as I think many businesses are wary of fully wireless setups. I think this is partly justified, but very easily mitigated, for example with a separate Wi-Fi network solely for point of sale and payments. With the right device, network equipment, software and card processor, reliability shouldn’t be an issue.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Mobile Payments, Mobile Point of Sale, Smartphone Tagged with: (POS) systems, aggregators rates, apps, BLE technology, bluetooth, card, card processor, card reader, cash, cash register, chargebacks, consumer data, credit, credit card payments, credit card processing, credit card processors, credit card reader, credit-card, customer support, data, data loss, debit card, debit rate, device, fraud, fraud risk, hardware, industry experts, merchant account, Merchant's, mobile, mobile app, mobile credit card processing, Mobile Devices, Mobile Payments, mobile point of sale, Mobile processing apps, mobile processing transactions, mobile technology, mobile wallets, network, network equipment, nfc, nfc technology, payment solutions, payment technology, PayPal, phones, point of sale, qr codes, retailers, rewards cards, Security, Smartphones, software, Square, tablet, tablets, vendor's app, wallet providers, Wi-Fi network, wireless mobile, wireless mobile devices
May 21st, 2014 by Elma Jane
There are no enforced standards in the card processing industry regarding rates, fees, and contractual terms. It is possible for two providers to offer seemingly the same rates and fees that result in different processing costs.
Excessive Monthly, Annual, or Quarterly Fees
There are numerous monthly, annual, or quarterly fees merchants may see on their statements each month. Many merchants pay far more than they should for these fees. The fees may have names like statement fee, service fee, membership fee, regulatory fee, PCI fee, and host of other names. The fair amount each merchant should pay for these fees varies by sales volume and merchant type. Also, the amount a merchant pays for any given fee isn’t as important as the overall processing cost. These are general guidelines; some merchants should pay far less. If you are currently paying more, it may be a good time to review your overall processing cost including your pricing plan, rates, and fees.
Excessive Payment Gateway Fees
A payment gateway route transactions from the merchant’s website to the provider. Some retail point-of-sales devices require a gateway to route the transactions. Merchants generally pay a per-month and a per-transaction fee for use of the gateway. As a rule, the direct cost to process through the gateway is a few cents per transaction.
PCI Non-compliance or Non-validation Fee
Many providers now charge a monthly non-compliance or non-validation fee if the merchant is not PCI compliant. This fee may be in addition to a monthly, quarterly, or annual PCI fee. Supposedly, providers charge the non-compliant or non-validation fee as an incentive for merchants to become compliant. Nonetheless, some providers use this fee more for revenue generation, than as an incentive. Some providers do not charge this fee at all.
Merchants should not change providers because of this fee. Instead, the merchants should become PCI compliant to eliminate the fee and reduce the probability of being breached, which could easily result in huge monetary penalties – tens of thousands of dollars. To become compliant, merchants should complete the PCI Self-Assessment Questionnaire and adhere to the PCI requirements, which may require quarterly scans. In short, if a merchant is being charged a non-compliance or non-validation fee, it is as much the merchant’s fault as anyone else.
Visa FANF Fee
In 2012, Visa started charging providers a Fixed Acquirer Network Fee (FANF). The actual fee charged by Visa is dependent on the merchant type. The fee for customer-present retail merchants is based on the number of locations. The cost for ecommerce and fast food merchants is based on the volume of business. Customer-present retail merchants that have non-swiped transactions can also pay an additional customer-not-present FANF fee.
Most aggregators – i.e., merchant account providers that group multiple merchants into a single merchant account, such as Square, PayPal – integrate the FANF cost into their rates and fees versus itemizing them out separately. Most traditional providers properly pass through the actual Visa FANF fee to their merchants. However, there are a few that treat this fee as another hidden revenue stream. I’ve seen providers charge a flat monthly fee for customer-present merchants and I’ve seen the FANF fee inflated by as much as 50 percent for ecommerce merchants. Keep in mind when reviewing that the fee is generally based on the volume of the prior month. In order words, the fee you see on your statement for April activity is likely based on the March volume, as providers need to know the monthly Visa volume before they can assess the fee.
Unusual Discover Card Fees
For Discover transactions, some providers charge a higher percentage, or higher per-item fee, or monthly access fee.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit card Processing Tagged with: (FANF), access fee, aggregators, breached, card processing industry, compliant, contractual terms, customer-not-present, customer-present retail merchants, devices, Discover transactions, ecommerce, ecommerce merchants, fast food merchants, fees, Fixed Acquirer Network Fee, flat monthly fee, gateway, integrate, membership fee, merchant account, merchant account providers, merchant type, Merchant's, merchant’s website, monetary penalties, non-compliance, non-swiped transactions, non-validation fee, payment gateway, PayPal, PCI fee, PCI non-compliance, PCI requirements, PCI Self-Assessment Questionnaire, pci-compliant, point-of-sales, pricing plan, processing cost, processing costs, provider, provider's, quarterly fees, Rates, regulatory fee, retail, retail point-of-sales devices, revenue, route transactions, sales volume, service fee, Square, statement, statement fee, statements, transactions, visa, Visa volume, website
May 13th, 2014 by Elma Jane
Keeping track of invoices and shipping data and making the information easily accessible, traditionally has not been so easy, even though PayPal has made it simpler for businesses to buy and sell goods and services online.
To address the issue, Microsoft has created a PayPal invoicingtemplate, which ExcelTemplates.net also has begun offering for free as part of its new line of templates and spreadsheets. With the new template, companies of any size may keep an exact digital record of their business transactions.
The PayPal invoice template from Microsoft is the all-in-one solution for companies looking for ways to streamline their invoicing process. The PayPal invoice template comes ready to use immediately after downloading. You can type, print or ship with just a few clicks and get back to business in no time.
When using the template, businesses type in the item name, a description of the item, item quantity, unit price, total amount and tax. The PayPal template also serves as a time-saving calculator that will calculate tax, totals and shipping charges for order of any size.
Companies also can add any applicable discounts or sales tax rates to come up with a final total. They also can add any special terms and conditions for the transaction, any special notes for the recipient and add a special memo for the company if necessary that won’t seen by the recipient.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Financial Services Tagged with: data, discounts, ExcelTemplates.net, invoicing, Microsoft, PayPal, Rates, sales tax, sales tax rates, shipping charges, shipping data
February 21st, 2014 by Elma Jane
NationalTransaction.com QR Code
Emerging economies, such as the BRIC countries and the next layer of emerging markets, are seeing particularly fast growth of alternative payments, said Kevin Dallas, chief product and marketing officer for e-commerce at WorldPay. This means the complexity of the payment landscape will increase further. Merchants will need to ensure they understand diverging regional and sector trends in preferred methods of payment.
In three years alternative payments will eclipse credit card payments as the dominant way to pay online, according to a report yesterday from London-based e-commerce processor WorldPay. In Your Global Guide to Alternative Payments (Second Edition), WorldPay found card payments online, which accounted for 57 percent of transactions in 2012, will fall to 41 percent in 2017. Alternative payment methods (defined by the report as anything other than credit or debit cards including bank transfers, direct debits, e-wallets, mobile, COD and others) will rise to 59 percent of online transactions in the next three years. Part of the reason is the preferred payment methods in some of the fastest growing e-commerce markets are not cards.
The report predicts e-wallet transactions alone will equal the number of credit card transactions online at 41 percent, becoming the most popular method of paying online globally by 2017. Currently, PayPal is the most popular alternative payment method in the world with a market share of 57 percent. China’s Alipay is second at 20 percent.
Posted in Credit card Processing, Digital Wallet Privacy, e-commerce & m-commerce, Electronic Payments, Internet Payment Gateway, Mobile Payments, Mobile Point of Sale, Near Field Communication, Visa MasterCard American Express Tagged with: alternative payments, bank transfers, card payments online, cod, credit card payments, credit card transactions, debit cards, direct debits, e-commerce, e-commerce processor, e-wallet transactions, e-wallets, methods of payment, mobile, online transactions, pay online, paying online, payment, PayPal, transactions
December 30th, 2013 by Elma Jane
Earlier this year, American Express offered its cardholders free permanent membership in ShopRunner, a service that gives its members free, two-day shipping at several retail sites. Similarly, PayPal recently tested two-day free shipping offers with a few retailers, whereby shoppers could get free, two-day shipping without an annual fee if they simply checked out using PayPal. The offer had no minimum purchase requirement. Now, Global payment firm MasterCard announced that its customers will receive free, two-day shipping from five of the Internet’s leading retailers. MasterCard also offered a premium service that extends the free, two-day shipping offer to other online merchants. MasterCard joins American Express and PayPal in offering customers free, two-day shipping options at select online retailers.
Collectively ShopRunner, PayPal’s offer, and MasterCard’s recent move may be part of what some in the retail industry are calling the Amazon Prime effect, which is a trend to faster, free shipping services driven in part by Amazon’s Prime service. These offers are changing customer expectations, so that merchants, regardless of size, may need to change free shipping offers to reflect the two-day service available from Amazon Prime, ShopRunner, and now MasterCard.
MasterCard Offer Aims at Large Retailers
To take advantage of the MasterCard offer, shoppers must register at a special MasterCard site, sign in and shop from the site, select two-day shipping at checkout and of course, pay with a MasterCard. Customers will have to pay for the two-day shipping upfront and email the order confirmation to MasterCard to be reimbursed.
Regular online shoppers may purchase an annual subscription for $69.99, extending the free, two-day shipping to about 30 larger retailers, including Nordstrom, J. C. Penney, Home Depot, and GameStop. The premium annual subscription also raises the maximum limit from $500 for six months to $1,500 per year.
The “Free Shipping by MasterCard” offer features five of the retail industry’s best known merchants: Best Buy, QVC, Macy’s, Kohl’s, and Walmart. Online purchases made from these sellers can earn free shipping up to $20 per purchase and $500 maximum over a six-month period.
Implications for Small, Mid-sized Ecommerce Merchants
Free shipping is now or, at least is becoming a key to online ecommerce success. As an example, Forrester Research’s U.S. Online Holiday Retail Forecast 2013, which was released on November 25, found that many online shoppers will leave a site and not buy anything if there is not a free shipping offer available.
Customers may look at shipping as an extra cost or even a waste of money, which is different from how they calculate the gas and inconvenience of going to a store or mall. Even offering free shipping with a minimum purchase can make customers feel better about the checkout process.
Where MasterCard’s offer is different is that it is increasing the expectation around how long a package should take to arrive, and, perhaps, changing how sellers need to think about free shipping.
When an ecommerce retailer purchases pay-per-click advertising, invests in email marketing, buys banner ads, or even prints a brochure or catalog to include in the shipping box, that retailer is investing to acquire or keep customers.
When it comes to accounting for these marketing investments, pay-per-click advertising, as an example, is often taken as part of marketing expenses generally and not attributed directly to a single transaction. For this reason, it is possible that merchants are losing money on some particular orders because of the advertising and promotional expenses associated with those particular orders, but making a profit overall thanks to spreading out marketing costs over all orders and generally increasing the total number of orders and reorders.
Ecommerce businesses may need to start thinking about shipping costs, even two-day shipping costs, in a similar way, not necessarily associating these costs with individual orders, but looking at the business as a whole to see if the free shipping offers are increasing profitability or market share company wide.
New Opportunity for Payment Providers
Free, two-day shipping offers also represent an opportunity for payment companies, like MasterCard, since these free shipping offers could give a particular payment service a competitive advantage. After all, most shoppers will choose the payment card or payment option that provides free shipping over other payment choices.
For the most part, PayPal, American Express via ShopRunner, and now MasterCard are focusing on large retailers, but there may be another opportunity with small and mid-sized online merchants.
Posted in Credit card Processing, e-commerce & m-commerce, Electronic Payments, Point of Sale, Visa MasterCard American Express Tagged with: Amazon, American Express, catalog, checkout, ecommerce, free, macy's. kohls, marketing, MasterCard, Merchant's, online, online merchants, pay-per-click, PayPal, purchases, qvc, retailers, shipping, shoppers, shoprunner, site, walmart
