The Merchant Services & Business Insider

Today, Bank of America announced that its Merchant Services division is launching Acculynk’s PaySecure®. It is the only merchant service solution in the United States that enables the use of PIN debit payments over the internet.

This is a significant development for the merchant services processing industry. Internet-based PIN debit enables the 80 million US consumers who own PIN-only debit cards to use their cards to make purchases online. This will enable Ecommerce merchant services sales volume to grow nationally. It should be a short amount of time before other merchant services providers follow suit.

Today Host Merchant Services announced that they have entered into a strategic partnership with cloud hosting services provider ServInt.  This is a smart business alliance because it will give ServInt the ability to provide flexible and customizable credit card processing services to its customers quickly and efficiently.  ServInt, is based just outside Washington D.C. in the beautiful town of McLean, VA.  It has been providing hosting services  since 1995.

Merchant service processing companies can form strategic business partnerships like this and allow for easy integration between their customer base as credit card processing companies like Host Merchant Services can compliment the customer base of ServInt.  Most business analysts would see this as an opportunity for SerVint to make credit card processing royalties off of their customer base, while providing an integrated payment processing solution to their hosting customers.

When you are looking for merchant services processing solutions for your  company you need to understand that if you look for general merchant services you will find a general solution.  Instead, you should narrow your search down to find your best merchant services solution that is specifically related to your business.  Doing so will help you find the best technology that will make running your merchant payments easier and faster and doing so will also result in lower merchant services processing fees.

So use these searches to help you refine your search.

• eCommerce Merchant Services
• High Risk Merchant Services
• Mail Order Merchant Services
• Online Merchant Services
• Office Merchant Services
• Medical Merchant Services/Doctor’s Office Merchant Services
• Petroleum Merchant Services
• Phone Order Merchant Services
• Quickbooks Merchant Serices
• Restaurant Merchant Services
• Retail Merchant Services
• Credit Merchant Services
• Wireless Merchant Services / Mobile Merchant Services

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.

Here is a great two minute video that talks about Visa’s digital wallet and the future of merchant services.

If you are accepting electronic payments and you fall into a high risk payment processing category you will need to get setup with a high risk merchant services merchant account.  Companies that need this type of service have a hard time getting accepted by most merchant services providers due to the following reasons:

1. High charge back rate industry vertical, for example, website hosting or online gaming.

2. Bad credit history

3. No credit history

4. eCommerce based business with no history and lack of strong personal guarantees.

If you fall into any of these merchant services categories you can actually get setup to accept credit cards, yet you will usually end up paying a few percentage points in premium for the higher risk the merchant services providers take by accepting your payments, this is because in the end of the day if you fall through, they are held financially responsible for whatever charge backs or fraud that goes through you.