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Choice Merchant Services has launched a Merchant Services Rates Calculator for the merchant services industry.  It is a simple, comprehensive, and unbiased Merchant Services Rates Calculator that allows anyone to compare the costs and savings of one merchant  provider against another. This simple merchant savings tool is of great use to merchants, merchant sales agents, ISOs, CFOs, controllers, and business owners who work to save a company money in payment processing.

“We saw a strong need for an industry-wide unbiased Merchant Services Rates Calculator as we worked with lots of companies that did not know or understand what their current merchant processing fees were and how the reduction in rates we offered them could save them substantial payment processing costs,” said Becky Soltis, Executive Vice President of Choice Merchant Services.

Visit the Merchant Services Rates Calculator and use it.   Then share it on Twitter, Facebook, Linked In and Google Plus.

Choice Merchant Services has partnered with North American Bancard’s brand PayAnyWhere to provide the best mobile merchant services processing business in the industry.  The solution is simple: Plug a card reader into your iPhone, iPad, Droid or Wireless device, download the free app and accept merchant services payments anywhere you are.

Mobile Merchant Services Rates:
You only pay whenonly when you process a transcation. There are no monthky minimum, no setup fees, no cancellation fees – just per transaction charges.

Merchant services rates are below:

Facebook.com has a huge user bases that has reached near market saturation of the Internet users in the United States. If I were CEO of Facebook I would evolve it’s mobile commerce engine to have full merchant services within a company’s page. Yet, I would integrate the Ecommerce merchant services capabilities of Facebook onto all pages. Facebook could essentially become the PayPal of Facebook and from there expand to mobile merchant services which could be integrated into smartphones, Facebook and Facebook apps. This could evolve into a multiple billion dollar business for Facebook if it were done right.

Atlanta-based Acculynk announced today it has acquired PayLeap, an   industry leading e-commerce payment gateway platform and merchant services ISO, to form Acculynk Direct, a new operating division of  Acculynk.

This new company division,  called Acculynk direct will expand Acculynk into being one of the few companies that can accept pin debit transactions over the Internet.

Daily I do a Google News search looking for the latest news on Merchant Services – yet pretty much every day I see a new set of news releases released to Equities.com that claims Merchant Data Systems has launched something new in the merchant services world for a niche vertical.  The simple fact is this does not appear to be the case – rather it seems like a marketing ploy to keep Merchant Data Systems name in the news.  I then read the link to the full set of press releases on PRWeb.com and found a lot of keyword stuffing in their news releases, that link to various pages within their website – which really appears to be more of a failed attempt to achieve SEO rankings for keywords that they feel are relevant to their business.  Luckily, it appears that Google has caught on as Merchant Data Systems does not appear to be ranking well for merchant services business terms.  Essenentially they are spamming the Internet with offers that are not esepcially useful, news worthly, or helpful.  I hope they stop this and focus on delivering relevelant merchant solutions to their customers instead – they are probably better at that anyway.

Good News for Merchant Services Processors:

Changes in American consumer behavior in the wake of the financial crisis have reached levels where  the remarkably resilient U.S. consumer has internalized the crisis’ lessons. Now, many surveyed and studied are showing smarter spending and saving trends.

Consumer behavior has also shown that despite the ongoing current economic recovery, the United States is witnessing a sustained growth in the credit sector, specifically credit card related purchases.

According to a report released by the Federal Reserve Monday consumer borrowing increased by $17.1 billion in May. The report showed a steep 11.2% rise  in credit card usage  linked to revolving debt. Credit card debt increased by $8 billion, the largest single-month gain since November 2007.

Phone Swipe from North American Bancard is now being offered by Choice Merchant Services.  Watch this two minute Phone Swipe mobile merchant services video and then get a best merchant services quote from Choice Merchant Services.

Finding a credible list of the best merchant services companies is difficult to do.  Here is a list of tips to make sure you find the best one:

1. Make sure they offer interchange plus pricing.  This pricing structure will allow your company to save the most money on pricing costs.

2. They should be willing to give you free merchant equipment.  The best processors must have a good client retention rate in order to be able to do this.

3. They should offer soup to nuts from mobile payment processing, to retail, office, and ecommerce merchant services.

4. They should offer 24/7 customer service.  If your payment processing is down – your business can lose a lot of money.

5. The should have an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau.

6. 100% of their merchant service offerings should be PCI compliant.  This greatly reduces your risk of having your money or customer data stolen.

If your merchant service provider fails to have any of the above offerings – don’t do business with them.

Quickbooks Merchant Services is a very popular setup for most businesses.  Want to understand why?  Watch this 2.5 minute video that shows the power of Quickbooks integrated merchant services solutions.

The Washington Post published an article on August 23rd, entitled “Will mobile payment fees reach zero?”  Apparently there is a brand new company called LevelUp that offers free mobile payment processing.  They currently have 3,000 companies across the United States processing payments through them.  This probably means this company is incredibly small, unprofitable and venture funded.  As far as I can tell they are hinging the success of their business model on being able to sell customer transaction data to other companies as well as sell advertising.  They essentially have to eat the several percent transaction  fees that companies like Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover charge and then more than make up for the cost of that by selling the services above.  This is a high risk business plan that costs a lot of money to setup – yet it certainly is very interesting.  The question is – is this business a viable and secure way to accept mobile merchant service payments?  Time will tell.