Chris Motola

Inflation is taking a big bite out of Americans’ purchasing power, but residents of Southern states may be feeling the hit to their wallets more intensely than elsewhere. Merchant Maverick’s inaugural report, The 10 U.S. States Where Inflation Is Hitting Consumers The Hardest, looks not only at where inflation is rising the fastest, but how much existing factors within a given state may contribute to the stress on a household budget.

In Merchant Maverick’s inaugural data report on The Best States In Which To Survive Recession, our analysis found that the states in the best condition to mitigate the effects of a recession aren’t where you might expect. Most of them, as it turns out, are in the Heartland.

Kabbage offers a line of credit can be a convenient and easy-to-access funding option for small businesses, even those that don’t have a perfect credit score. However, because Kabbage Funding can be expensive, we advise applicants to make sure they fully understand the cost before accepting a financing offer.

Square offers one of the quickest and easiest setup processes in payment processing and is one of our favorite solutions for small businesses. Still, there may come a time when your business outgrows Square or no longer needs credit card processing. When that happens, you’ll want to know how to cancel your Square account.

For businesses that make infrequent and small transactions, Cash App is a wonderful convenience. You’ll be able to take Cash App and credit card transactions with minimal fuss and no hardware expenditures outside of the mobile device you’re already using. The flat 2.75% transaction fee recalls the old days of Square; with no flat markup, it’s possible to make very small transactions economically.

To start a collection agency, you’ll need a robust suite of hardware and services to accept payments online and over the phone. Whether you’re building your agency from the ground up or already have a business that needs to switch to a better merchant account provider, your agency’s success depends on multi-channel payment support, systems to combat fraudulent chargebacks, and transparent pricing plans and contractual requirements.

Stripe Payments can be a great tool for tech-savvy nonprofits, particularly those that take most of their donations online. Stripe’s nonprofit discount is significant and competitive; just keep in mind that not all donations qualify for the discounted rate.

While they’re still a bit rough around the edges, crypto payments can be a cheap way to process non-cash payments at a time when the costs of credit card transactions are ballooning. Just make sure you select a provider with a solid reputation and low costs that offer you the amount of exposure to crypto that you want.

Shopify Payments is Shopify’s built-in payment processing feature, which allows you to accept credit and debit cards, as well as additional payment methods. By default, Shopify Payments is a white label version of Stripe and has most of that payment processor’s strengths and weaknesses. Learn more about Shopify Payments and how to set it up for your small business.

Novel payment methods seem to be arriving at a faster and faster pace. One you may have heard of recently is called a payment link, a way to bill your customers through their mobile devices (or email, if you or they are feeling retro).