Maintaining any business is a bit of juggling act. Online merchants often face even greater challenges because they face more incidents of true fraud and friendly fraud. It is critical that ecommerce merchants keep fraud in check and factor in expenses for money lost on shipping, lost products, chargeback fees, and probable losses of merchant accounts. To stay in business,...
A merchant’s ability to accept credit card transactions is not created equally. Therefore, there is no one-size-fits-all account for every business. This is why is imperative that businesses understand aggregate vs direct merchant accounts. What is an aggregate merchant account? The best way to describe an aggregate merchant account is to consider it a shared account in which acquirers place...
Merchant account load balancing gives merchants the ability to divide transactions across multiple accounts. It is an account management tool that helps merchants minimize risk and increase processing volumes. Preparing for Challenges Frozen or terminated merchant accounts can dramatically impact your bottom line. Load balancing helps. By juggling transactions across a few merchant accounts, you can still can continue to...
Despite the legal uncertainties surrounding cannabidiol (CBD), interest and business is booming. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued warnings, noting there is little scientific evidence backing up the promoted benefits of CBD or whether its use can cause harm to people and animals. This warning comes despite mass roll outs of creams, lotions, drinks, food, supplements, and other...
Visa will buy the Los Angeles-based Verifi, which offers tools that help merchants, acquirers, and issuers to resolve chargebacks. This is especially impactful considering rising chargebacks in the industry. Though the terms of the acquisition were not announced, Visa said it will integrate Verifi’s technology with the risk-management offerings from CyberSource and Cardinal Commerce. Visa acquired CyberSource in 2010 and...
Independent sales organization, Electronic Merchant System (EMS), must pay more than $5.4 million in residuals to a sales agent due to breach of contract. This decision, which originated from a dispute over residuals and how contract conditions are interpreted, could lead to major complications for those, like ISO agents, in the merchant acquiring sector. Unless EMS appeals the ruling by...
U.S., European, and Indian governments have asked Facebook to stop its plans for its newly announced cryptocurrency, Libra, until it addresses questions related to security and other concerns. Entities Current Stances on Facebook Libra Legislators from the U.S. and Europe have criticized and pushed back on Libra since Facebook unveiled its plans. Most are concerned about Facebook’s history of data...
When Square, the San Francisco-based financial services and mobile payment company co-founded by Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey, launched in 2010, many didn’t realize the profound effect it would have on the payments industry. Though it gave the smallest sellers, like jewelry vendors and other sole entrepreneurs, their first chances to accept credit card payments on the fly, a number of...
Despite popular belief, the use of contactless cards will not trigger widespread adoption of mobile payments, according to new research. Instead of easing consumers into the habit of paying for things with their mobile devices, the New York-based research firm, Auriemma Consulting Group, reported that contactless cards may not actually attract new mobile payment users. They believe this may be...
Forrester Research reported in 2017 that B2B (business-to-business) e-commerce transactions will climb to $1.2 trillion by 2021. Within the United States, this accounts for more than 13% of all B2B sales. That figure is up $889 billion in sales calculated at the end of 2018. None of this is surprising considering more day-to-day decisions are left in the hands of...
