Interview With Merchant Account Consultant Mike Shatz
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Mike Shatz is the owner of TheMerchantsGuide.com. His website offers both content and services for those that are interested in learning more about merchant account fees. He has a book called “Understanding Merchant Account Fees in Card Not Present Environments” which I’ll be reviewing soon.
I invited him over to give us a rundown of what he offers. Mainly because I think it’s a service that could be very important to some of my readers.
I’ve talked about you in a previous article, but if you don’t mind, can you remind us of who you are, and what it is that you do?
By way of introduction, I have spent the last 20 years working in the Internet, e-commerce and payments industries. Of course, these days, they are all interrelated. I have been very focused on payments for the past 10 years, mostly on the acquiring side. I have therefore had an opportunity to work with over a thousand merchants, large and small. Generally my goals are to lower costs and/or increase the merchants processing efficiencies. These often go hand-in-hand.
Your focus is on card-not-present (CNP) merchants, is that correct? Do you work with card-present (CP) merchants at all?
I would say that virtually all of the merchants I have helped are primarily CNP. I really cut my teeth at Litle & Co., which is a mega-boutique payment processor for CNP merchants. These days, however, most merchants are multichannel, and have some brick-and-mortar (read: credit card terminal) locations. I would not claim to be an expert on terminals, however, the principals for lowering costs are the same though – they are driven by Interchange rates. With terminals, this has a lot to do with programming and set-up.
You’ve also written a book on the subject of “understanding merchant account fees” for card-not-present merchants. Can you tell us a little bit about what readers can expect from it?
Well, there are two audiences for this guide. The first, for which I had originally intended the guide, is merchants. The book really explains how the credit card systems work in terms of fees, and lays down a detailed mathematical roadmap that allows these merchants to do a lot of their own analysis. The guide includes many formulas and examples and even includes a sample spreadsheet. An unintended audience for the guide is payment professionals themselves. In fact, I sell more guides to processors and ISOs than I do merchants – even employees of the credit card associations.
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Thanks Mike! To learn more about Mike’s services, go to TheMerchantsGuide.com. You can purchase his book here.
Amad Ebrahimi
Founder at Merchant Maverick
Amad has worked in the eCommerce and online marketing world since 2002. He started as an eBay seller, then slowly graduated to building & marketing his own websites and consulting others to do the same. He founded Merchant Maverick out of frustration with all the misinformation and shady tactics that he encountered when trying to find a merchant account for his and his client's businesses. He's the man behind most of the merchant account reviews, and articles posted on MerchantMaverick.com. Have any questions related to credit card processing? Talk to him.
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Hello Amad,
My name is Singh. Me and my wife started an IT company about a year ago. Our business did pretty well. We initially started out as web developers and later added couple more service lines such as desktop support and SEO. We were managing the deadline very well until our only employee quit without a notice. The situation became very stressful because of approaching deadlines and lack of talent in the market. We decided to outsource some of the work and started to meet the deadlines. One day I received a call from a guy from our Merchant Account and he ask me few questions about our business model and decided to shut down our merchant account. When I asked why, he replied its because we hire technicians in some other country and also its because of our home based business. Lack of commercial office, which we could not afford at that time. Long story short, what are my options at this point ?
Thanks
B. Singh
This comment refers to an earlier version of this post and may be outdated.
Hi B. Singh,
Thank you for your inquiry, I am happy to help you with this. I would try Instabill and Durango Merchant Services.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this post and may be outdated.