Merchant Accounts or Credit Card processing Information for Small & MIdSize Businesses (Like Mine)> Here's vital info on processing Subscription Revenue Credit Card Processing, Credit Card Merchant Accounts, Third Party Processors, Shopping Cart Software, PCI Compliance, Card Not Present, Fee Structures, et al
Sunday, November 29, 2009
PayPal Merchant Account
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Seven Eleven Credit Card Rebellion - Update
Some 6,300
Interchange fees are hidden fees to the consumer and are set privately by credit card companies and charged to store owners every time that a customer uses a credit card. Transaction fees squeezed American businesses and their customers to the tune of $48 billion in 2008 alone. On average, an American store owner will actually pay nearly twice as much in transaction fees as they earn in profits, according to the National Association of Convenience Stores 2007 State of the Industry data.
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“Interchange fees are hurting individual small business operators, which represent more than 75 percent of
The petition drive takes place at all of
“We’re not asking for a bailout, we simply want to negotiate in good faith with credit card companies in the same manner we negotiate with thousands of our other business partners,” Rebelez said.
American consumers pay among the highest transaction fees in the industrialized world. An average of $2 out of every $100 Americans spend goes to transaction fees, and for many businesses, transaction fees are now their highest non-labor cost, growing even faster than health care costs. As other countries have reined in excessive transaction fees in recent years, and the actual cost of processing credit card transactions has gone down, Americans are now paying triple the amount in transaction fees they paid in 2001, reaching $48 billion last year alone.
Rebelez added, “In the convenience industry, credit card companies come out the winner making more than twice the profits of the industry in total. To date, we have been unable to convince these companies to come to the table to negotiate fair fees. In order to survive and stay in business, our franchisees and licensees plan to make a significant, collective statement with this petition drive. With this unprecedented effort, Congress will hear the message of
The
About 7 Eleven, Inc.
7 Eleven, Inc. is the premier name and largest chain in the convenience retailing industry. Based in Dallas, Texas,
Saturday, October 17, 2009
PayPal Update
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Paypal - hard to get a straight answer
- How does one hook up Google analytics to get real data when a significant percent of the customers are leaving the site to go to PayPal to sign up? Can we put analytics code on a thank you page on PayPal? The problem is that the Thank You Page on Paypal has a return to site button but it's a small button.
- We have two distinct business units and we'd like to easily track PayPal payments to distinct business units. Is this possible using a single PayPal account? I think not, so this raises new questions.
- Can the same business, defined as a single FEIN (tax ID), have two PayPal business accounts? I think not but after an hour on the phone today, the operator and his supervisor assured us that we could so long as they were linked to separate bank accounts.
Friday, August 21, 2009
PayPal as an adequate Merchant Account Solution
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
More credit card declines
As a result of over 100 million credit card numbers being stolen from Heartland Payment Systems (and other companies) we're seeing a large increase in credit card declines. Some of these declines are because many Bankds and Credit Unions have issued new cards to card holders and cancelled the cards that may have been compromised.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Seven Eleven Credit Card Rebellion
They talked about a 7-11 petition for customers to ask the credit card companies to roll-back fees. The reporter said that Visa was taking $.10 a transaction plus a 1% interchange rate for simple credit cards and debit cards. Gift and foreign cards had higher rates. The 7-11 Convenience store was complaining about the high rate which was hard to predict, arbitrary and on a typical small purchase of $2.50, is about 5%.
I've often wondered why Walmart, in their relentless pursuit of lower prices for customers, have not gone after credit card expense. Is it because they also are in the credit card business so they are making money on it? (By the way, this is total speculation, I have no idea whether Walmart offers credit cards). Is it because Walmart has a special deal with the card companies are are paying a much lower rate than everybody else? (again, total speculation, I have no insight and haven't yet researched it).
Costco doesn't allow Visa or Mastercard credit cards in their stores. You either pay with Amex or a debit card. Is that part of a strategy to attack those fees?
Anybody know?
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
The easy way out
We are using the Paypal as a merchant account option.
I'll tell you how it goes.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Need a new vendor
Authorize.net seems to be the name brand. If anyone wants to bid, contact me asap. It starts with a zero run-rate and I expect to collect a million dollars in the first year, most of it in the first three months (August through October) as a back to school thing.
Yes, I'm in a hurry.
Payments will mostly be $99 or $49. Contact me as creditcardsonline101 @ a gmail email.
jo
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Recurring Payments
The problem is that when the credit card fails to go thru on one of the recurring billings, we have no automated way of having the information passed back into our system. Also, when members cancel, we need to manually go into our credit card system and cancel the member.
There are also problems around credit card updates in that these are handled as cancellations and new accounts, not just as a credit card update. So our records get all messed up.
When I inquire about to automate these things, I'm told that we should switch to batch processing. The credit cards can still be kept at the vendors but we'll have to submit a daily list of people to bill.
Any ideas or articles to point me to which discuss these issues?
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
PaySimple Payment Processing Services
PaySimple is an easy to use web-based payment processing application providing a complete payment gateway for electronic check (e-check) processing, ACH direct-debit processing, credit card processing, recurring billing, online bill-pay, and check processing via phone or online.
PaySimple provides one simple time and money saving solution for a variety of credit card and ACH payment processing needs:
RECURRING BILLING
The Recurring Billing feature sets PaySimple apart. With recurring billing, you can set-up automatic payments for your customers, via ACH direct-debit transfers from a bank account or via credit card.
ONLINE PAYMENT PROCESSING
PaySimple's secure online payment gateway is ideal for implementing online bill-pay and payment processing for online shopping carts. A payment form can be hosted on your site or on PaySimple's secure server for one time transactions or customer initiated auto recurring billing.
CREDIT CARD PROCESSING
PaySimple offers some of the lowest credit and debit card payment processing rates available. We combine credit card transactions with check and direct debit payments in a single system. You can also set-up auto recurring billing for credit card payment processing.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Merchant Accounts and accounting
Most significantly, we are considering the receipt of payment at our merchant account vendor account to be revenue. Previously, the accounting system recognized revenue only when the funds were transfered from my merchant account into my bank account. The result was that our revenues appeared uneven. For example, January 2009 ended with a three day holiday. So all the funds received by us from Friday Jan 27 until Tuesday, February 1st were deposited on the first.
So 10% of our January revenues would have, under our old system, been reported in February so our accounts were arbitrarily uneven. New system more accurately reflects revenues.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Got a better rate on my merchant account!
Now I am talking about my merchant account for taking credit cards so apparently, I had forgotten, that when I applied I had been given an amount that I could collect monthly. And a few years ago, it was upped. Well, she informed me that I am now collecting on a monthly basis, about 30% above my limit.
"But, this is a good thing right?" I asked.
"Why yes, but it does need more paperwork. I need a balance sheet, income statement, and a filled in questionnaired and we can raise it."
I then played a little softball talking about how since I've gotten so much bigger and have such a low chargeback rate (way short of 1%), then I must be a more attractive client. She agreed and volunteered that she might be able to get me a better rate.
And she did? While it's hard to understand, it sounds like I've gone from 1.95% to 1.8% on a key expense line. I think I'm pleased but I will keep an eye on the overall expense as a percentage of sales because now that I know it's going to move, I wouldn't be surprised if they reclassify things in such a way that the net change is not, overall, in my favor.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
PCI Compliance for Level 3 Vendor
The requirements for me are, I think:
1. Filling out and sending to my bank a PCI Self-Assessment Questionnaire.
2. A quarterly scan by an approved vendor. Here is a partial list of vendors:
Mcafeesecure.com - 807 322-9965
ControlScan.com
SecurityMetrics.com
3. Ensuring your gateway provider is PCIDSS compliant. Here is where it's a little gray for me. My vendor is not on the list. But, he has submitted a letter to me showing that he is compliant under an arrangement with another company. If I wanted the validity of that reviewed, who would I check with? Am I being too nerdy in wanting to check?
Friday, January 9, 2009
Google Checkout is no longer free
But Google Checkout is no longer free or even reduced for Adwords users. I'm disappointed since as a large adwords advertiser (large in terms of my credit card processing fees), this was looking like a no-brainer way to save money.
I did think it was a little too good to be true. It's terribly 500 pound guerillaish for google to have started squashing the credit card processing industry by this type of cross marketing. Given their troubles as a potential monopolist, I think this was really heavy-handed of them.
As it is, they are going to get grief for taking over Madison Avenue and most of the advertising industry
Thursday, January 8, 2009
the PCI Self-Assessment Questionnaire
https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/saq/index.shtml.
For a quarterly scan there are several companies that offer a free scan or you can subscribe to their yearly service. Examples:
http://www.hackerguardian.com/hackerguardian/buy/pci_free_scan.html
http://www.mcafeesecure.com/us/pci-intro.jsp
https://www.controlscan.com
https://www.securitymetrics.com/sitecertinfo.adp
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
February deadline for PCI Compliance
...in February 2009 that is all changing. Visa Inc. (all regions except Europe) has defined new level definitions for service providers and removed the usage of ‘gateway’ from this definition. This change does not take effect until Feb. 1, 2009 so companies wishing to validate now should do so under the current rules.
Now, the context there was about some type of aggregators of merchant services such as:
... a shared e-commerce provider or independent sales organization (ISO) that aggregates transactions
I think this includes hosting companies, shopping cart vendors, and software service vendors that offer credit card processing as a component of their service. BTW - none of this applies to me. I'm still looking for what my compliance issues as a:
- an online retailer of online services
- paid by credit card
- handling over 100K transactions per year
- not keeping any credit card data in electronic or paper form.
PCI Compliance Required?
We're getting many questions about the requirements for PCI certification.
The requirement for merchants processing less than 20,000 transactions per year is just a PCI Self-Assessment Questionnaire as long as you don't store any credit card numbers.
I don't store credit cards, I did it all thru others but I do over 10K transactions per month which is a great deal more than 20K transactions per year. Do I need to fill out the PCI Self-Assessment Questionnaire? Do I need to do more?
To figure this out I should probably contact my vendor. Here's the truth about my vendor, I almost never talk to the bank. Sometimes, I forget who it is. My entirely relationship is with ------- who I guess is an ISO for them. They're a pretty small company for me to be running over 120K transactions (mostly small in the $20 - $60 range) through.
This is where I admit that I've never created or discovered a truly great glossary to help me understand the roles of the merchant bank, the gateway, the network, third party processors, ISOs, and so on.
Returning to the question of PCI compliance, I'll call my processor. I didn't make it to the PCI compliance webinar that I said that I would. I did, through consulting http://www.merchantaccountblog.com/, discover two blogs about PCI compliance. I'll read them next:
PCI Answers
Payment Card Security & IT Controls Explained