Payment Processing Articles

Merchant Account PCI Compliance: 4 Tips to Help Small Businesses

If a business, large or small, is responsible for collecting or processing any cardholder data, it needs to follow the Payment Card Industry's compliance regulations to ensure customers' data is secure. Here are four steps you as a small business owner can take to get started with understanding the ins and outs of PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).
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How to Improve Cash Flow and Help Your Small Business Bloom

While consumers are increasingly demanding more convenient payment methods-echecks, email invoicing, and online payments-small businesses are still slow to adopt. Here's a look at one small business owner who sought an e-payment solution to improve his customers' experience, and ended up improving his cash flow.
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Electronic Giving Provides Simplicity and Convenience for the Modern Church

As seen in Religious Product News: September 2007
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Businesses are increasingly switching to electronic payment processing systems in order to keep up with consumer demand for more payment options and flexibility-and are saving money in the process. Unfortunately, Churches and Nonprofit organizations are falling behind the curve, even though they need efficient systems as much as any for-profit business, if not more.
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Fundraising Made Simple

How to effectively make a fundraiser less time consuming and more cost efficient with online fundraising capability. Fundraising through various activities as sales, silent auctions, walkathons, races, or entertainment events is a popular revenue generator for charitable and non-profit organizations. However, quite a few obstacles exist in the pursuit of running a successful fundraiser, including lacking or overworked volunteers, limited payment methods, limited reach, and overall process inefficiencies.
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And What's Your Dog's Name?

As a business owner and consumer, it's important to understand why companies ask for personal information, when you should provide it, how to detect key signs of fraudulent activity, and how you can protect yourself from identity theft.
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How to Significantly Reduce Payment Processing Costs by Converting Debit-Card Customers to Direct-Debit Payments

There are multiple ways for customers to pay merchants such as paper checks, credit cards, debit cards linked to bank accounts, and ACH electronic funds transfers. Each payment method results in different fees being passed on to account holders and merchants. The smart merchant will weigh the pros and cons of each method with regards to safety, accountability, and processing cost, and then design her business practices to maximize profits without compromising customer service. This article will help merchants do this by comparing two very similar payment methods-debit card charges and bank account ACH direct-debits. It will explain how switching customers who pay with debit-cards to direct-debit transactions can significantly reduce merchant processing costs.
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How to Reduce Accounts Receivable Costs by Over 50% with Auto Recurring Billing

Auto recurring billing enables businesses to automatically bill customers for balance due without sending invoices or obtaining payment information each any every time money is collected. This article provides detailed examples of different types of auto recurring billing programs, how they benefit businesses and consumers, system requirements for implementing these programs, and suggestions, including a sample customer letter, for rolling out auto recurring billing programs.
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Never Go To The Bank Again: How Businesses Save Time and Money with Electronic Check Processing

Learn how to deposit paper checks as if they were electronic funds and accept checks over the phone or via the internet - instantly and from your computer! Electronic Checks (or E-Checks) save time, save money, and are more secure than legacy checks. Find out how it works, and get tips on selecting the best payment processing company.
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Merchant Account Rates Explained: Do You Know How Much Each Credit Card Transaction Really Costs You?

Understanding your true credit card rates can be confusing. Your bank may highlight one low rate, but you may get that rate on only a very small percentage of transactions. All Merchant Processors have their own way of presenting fees and transaction charges, so it is often difficult to make apples to apples comparisons amongst companies competing for your business. This article breaks-down the components of the charge to process credit/debit card transactions--sometimes these fees are hidden, but they are always there in one form or another.
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Selecting a Payment Processing Partner: Revenue Enhancing Tips for Business Software Developers

Most business software is designed to enable customer tracking, invoice generation and invoice printing. However, most business software applications don't take the logical next step of enabling automatic billing and collection of monthly charges. By omitting this crucial last step, the software vendor unnecessarily complicates and lengthens the receivables process for users and also passes up the potential for additional ongoing revenue streams. The easiest way to provide this functionality is to partner with a payment processing company that can provide a turnkey module that integrates with the core business application. This article provides tips on selecting such a partner.
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How to Integrate Business Software Packages with Payment Processing Modules

Integrating payment processing into business software packages can increase the value of the program and provide an additional ongoing revenue stream for developers. A payment processing module can be embedded into the application, be a stand alone-module, or be implemented as an external online bill-pay feature. This article provides examples of each implementation, along with general guidance on implementation time, cost, and revenue potential.
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