June, 2012:

Remember the days of punch cards at your favorite restaurant?  Make 10 visits and get a free meal?  Well this has now come to merchant services in digital form with digital punch cards.  Welcome to the world of Square.

Square which has made news as a mobile payment start-up has placed its bets on a future  providing merchants with a full suite of related tools. Square is working to fill expand its offering of services and with new loyalty tools such as digital punch cards.  This system allows merchants to create digital punch cards for merchant customers – increasing customer loyalty with the use of a smart phone – something now a days – most of us carry with us at all times.

It is important that you have a great shopping cart to maximize the amount of sales you get on your website per visitor.

For example, Amazon.com has a built 1-click check out system.  This allows a website visitor from  the page that he sees his product advertised to be able to complete a purchase with just 1 click.

On the other hand, I am sure you have been to a website where it takes 10 minutes to make a purchase because of all of the excessive questions asked of you and the several steps and clicks involved in making a purchase.  Even worse, on some website, despite your best intentions to purchase you literally did not know what to click on next to make a purchase.

When you own an ecommerce website, it is imperative that you find a good ecommerce merchant services partner that can give you a simple website checkout process that will yield the maximum dollars per website visitor for you.

There are two platforms that offer the versatility that allow you to choose your own shopping cart.  In addition, if you are on a tight budget both of these options come with free shopping carts that are easy to install on your website as well as easy for your website visitors to use.

PlugNPay.com – This solution is specifically built for eCommerce.  When you get it the EZCart Shopping Cart comes free with it, which is great for any ecommerce business.

Authorize.net – This is one of the best known and most used payment gateways.  It comes with all of the ecommerce capabilities you need.  Yet, in addition, it comes with some mobile payment options and retail payment options that can truly provide your business with an all-in-one payment solution.

When you are looking for a merchant services provider you will come across rates being promoted such as .005% merchant processing fees. The saying goes if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. That definitely holds true here. Merchant services providers have to pay the merchant processing rates rate visa and mast card charge and with a rate that low the provider is losing at least 1.10% per transaction.

When you see rates that are that low it is a rate to get you to sign a long term contract – a contract that does not prohibit the merchant services provider from raising your rates to very high levels. Protect yourself and ask for interchange plus pricing.

This is a great 2.5 minute video of a merchant services review of the Square for the iPhone.

When you consider switching from one merchant services provider to another there are a few things you should look at to see your savings.

1. Total your current qualified merchant services average monthly volume and rate.
2. Total your current mid-qualified merchant services average monthly volume and rate.
3. Total your current non-qualified merchant services average monthly volume and rate.
4. Total your per transaction monthly total fees and rate.
5. Total your monthly merchant services fees.

Then get a quote for the 5 things above from your current merchant services provider and compare the total cost savings by switching to the new merchant service provider.