Trying to choose the best credit card processing company can be overwhelming. This is especially true when you are a new small business owner who has never even heard of a “merchant account” before — but the truth is that even seasoned CEOs can get dizzy while researching the payment processing industry. (Trust us, we’ve […]
We don’t typically think about what happens in the moments after we swipe our debit and/or credit cards. More often than not, we simply run or insert our card into the credit card machine and hope that the cashier doesn’t use the next few moments to initiate small talk. The number in our checking account […]
So you’re a merchant and you want to start an ecommerce business. That’s great! You’re going to need, at minimum, three things: Products/services (of course), a website (obviously), and an online credit card payment processing company. Not just any old merchant account or credit card payment processor will do. You need one that’s tailored for […]
Merchant services providers are notorious for tacking on all kinds of additional fees for their services, often not disclosing them during the sales process and leaving it to merchants to find them buried somewhere in the pages and pages of fine print that make up their contracts. One fee that raises a lot of questions […]
Criminal behavior is constantly changing in response to the methods designed to prevent it. Given technological advances, successfully robbing a bank is much more difficult than it used to be. And this holds true for any form of theft that requires the offender to be physically present. The advent and proliferation of the internet, however, […]
We live, unfortunately, in the age of the data breach. Target. Home Depot. Sony. The IRS. ADP. Noodles & Co. Wendy’s. Yahoo. Over the past few years, all of these companies (and many, many others) have been hit with some sort of data breach that has compromised personalized data ranging from social security numbers and W2 information to credit card numbers. […]
Have you ever wondered why we shake hands when meeting new people? One of the prevailing theories is that it originated as a way to ensure the mutual safety of two strangers; by shaking each other’s hands, both parties would be able to tell if the other “had something up their sleeve,” such as a […]
Every sector has its own language. The government, the military, and the medical field aren’t the only ones that seem to have more acronyms than actual words; now, the private sector gets to join in the esoteric fun. In this article, I’ll reveal the latest acronym that merchants need to know – EMV. What It […]
Watch out, merchants: Dubbed “PoSeidon” by Cisco Security Solutions, this malware is a new type of trojan that specifically targets POS (point of sale) systems, nabbing the credit card information of your unsuspecting customers. Cisco stated in a March 2015 report that POS malware attacks are on the rise, affecting businesses both large and small. […]
A large majority of companies in the U.S. are considered small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). Most SMBs don’t process any more than 20,000-1,000,000 (some much less) transactions per year, categorizing them as Level 4 merchants in the PCI world. For those of you that have read my article on merchant risk levels, you’ll know […]
