I run a software company and need the ability for my clients to accept payments from members online through the software.
My friends tell me I should get a third-party hosted payment page through a gateway and merchant service provider like you to protect my clients.
What exactly is a hosted payment page? Do I really need one? What’s the real benefit?
If you accept credit cards in your brick-and-mortar business, you hopefully have heard the term EMV and are preparing your business to update its current credit card processing terminals.
More and more payment card issuers are replacing old payment cards with new ones which feature an embedded chip.
After October 1st, if a data breach causes customer financial data to be exposed, the liability for such a breach will fall to whichever party in the transaction has the lesser technology.
When a change like this affects so many merchants at the same time, deciding how to proceed can be stressful and even a bit confusing.
While much is known about EMV technology, there are also quite a few misconceptions. In this article, we’ll address 5 common EMV myths.
Continue reading “Top 5 Myths about EMV Every Merchant Should Know”
There seems to be some confusion about what exactly constitutes mCommerce.
For the sake of this article, we’ll define it as “the sale or purchase of goods and services via mobile/wireless devices.” This includes apps, as well as mobile-optimized webpages.
While the ability to conduct commerce via a mobile platform is a given in industries like music, apps and games, mobile commerce (or mCommerce) is becoming more and more relevant for other industries in and out of the retail sector. For example, in the B2B world, a recent survey of C-level executives found that 77% use their smartphone to research and ultimately purchase products and services for their businesses.
Continue reading “The Tide is Turning: How to Leverage the mCommerce Boom”
The merchant liability shift is coming, and with it, tons of news articles and online resources to sift through to try and understand its impact.
That’s why we created this one simple slideshow that spells out the upcoming EMV changes in easy-to-understand terms.
Take a look at the slideshow for need-to-know info on EMV and the new liability rules, then share the slides on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn by clicking the arrow button on the bottom of the presentation.
Rick is a Business Development Executive with over 20 years of experience running a successful membership-based company built around a lucrative recurring revenue business model. As an Executive for Constellation Payments, a fully integrated and proprietary payment gateway and merchant service provider, as well as for Member Solutions, a leading provider of full-service billing for enterprise businesses, Rick enjoys working through complex business models, and leveraging proven payment processing strategies for maximum effect.
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And it’s GREAT when it comes to the October EMV compliance mandate. The investment you’ll make in new EMV-enabled terminals is not just one of more secure transactions. It’s an investment that will bring new and exciting business-growing opportunities to you.
Continue reading “Did You Know? EMV-Ready Terminals Come with Big Business-Building Benefits”
Right now, U.S. banks are issuing new payment cards with computer chips to consumers.
And right now, U.S. merchants are being urged to implement new chip-certified terminals to accept chip cards.
It’s all happening in preparation for three little letters that carry BIG implications starting October 2015 … EMV.
Continue reading “Chip Cards Solve Only Part of Security Puzzle”
You have a great product with great marketing and PR. You also have decided to add a subscription model to your offerings, so that you can have an ongoing revenue stream from your customers. But beware … if you don’t avoid these three errors at fulfillment, you and your company will suffer:
Continue reading “3 Fulfillment Mistakes that Can Kill a Subscription Business”
It pays to consider (and reconsider) all options. We live in a day and age, where today’s “King of the Hill” can become tomorrow’s old news.
Markets are disrupted at a pace never seen before. Disruptions used to be slow, because getting capital for unproven concepts required capital that was hard to find outside of banks or venture capital firms.
Today crowdfunding platforms like indigogo.com have changed how and at what pace new concepts can be taken to market. The new rule is: “innovate or die.”
There’s no doubt that if you sell a consumable product like razors or diapers that there’s a lot of money to be made by offering those products as an ongoing subscription. Customers agree to pay dollarshaveclub.com or diapers.com on a schedule and have their credit cards charged, and their products delivered, on a schedule. These make sense right away.
But there are other ways to leverage the power of a recurring billing model. Here are 3 options worth investigating:
Continue reading “3 Creative eCommerce Models that Yield Substantial Subscription-Based Revenue”
Moving to or adding a recurring revenue model will definitely cause a spike in customer sales. It will also increase the number of interactions you have with each customer. This is important to consider if you are planning a DIY approach to automating the recurring transactions (i.e. coding it yourself).
Trying to build and implement your own payment processing platform is a complex undertaking and can cause real headaches, missed revenue opportunities and big client problems due to billing errors. Administrative costs will be higher too. In-house programming will also inhibit your ability to quickly change your offerings, because every change requires new coding. Here are some key things to consider:
Continue reading “DIY Recurring Payments? Read This Before You Go Any Further”
Many payment gateways have a “one size fits all” approach to platform features. When you think about it, it’s clear who benefits. Spoiler Alert! … it’s not you, your company or your customers.
Offering a menu of options ensures that every customer can find an option that works for them, but you’ll find it difficult to implement a list like the one below when using large payment gateways, whose focus is not firmly on recurring transactions:
