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The economy is on everyone’s mind these days, and we’re all searching for ways to save money wherever we can. Banks benefit from government bailouts, credit cardholders are offered promotional rates and reward programs, but who is looking out for the merchant? Incentives are given to consumers for them to spend more. Upgrades are made to the bank networks. These costs have to come out of someone’s pockets, and unfortunately it is the merchant who takes the brunt of these added costs. But there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Fees for card-not-present transactions are among the highest in payment processing, since fraud and chargebacks are more prevalent and harder to control. Keeping costs low is possible, however, by following three simple steps:

 Identify and Reduce Risks.

Educate Yourself on the Basics of Payment Processing. Uncover the Truth Behind Your Fees

 

Identify and Reduce Risks

Most online merchants take it for granted that fees are higher in their business, but the reasons may not always be obvious. There are some risk factors behind accepting payments online which you may not even be aware of, and they may be responsible for higher fees imposed by your merchant services provider (MSP). 

Product type and description can have a direct impact on whether or not consumers are satisfied with what they receive. You don’t want them calling you, or worse, their credit card company. Be as clear and concise as possible regarding product details, to avoid surprising your customers.

Claims you make regarding your product can have an equally important negative response from your customers. Avoid complaints and chargebacks by being as accurate and truthful in your claims. The bottom line: set realistic expectations and then follow through.

Shipping times and methods should be clearly identified as to give your customers an expectation of when they will receive their product. Sending shipments insured with tracking information and proof of delivery saves you both time in answering customer inquiries and money incurred by chargebacks or fraud.

2. Educate Yourself on the Basics of Payment Processing

Staying on top of changes in the payment processing industry can help you to better understand who is charging you what, how much, and for what specific reason. This may help you avoid unnecessary fees. Work with a knowledgeable and proactive merchant services provider that can help you stay up-to-date with industry changes. First, let’s identify who and what are involved.

The acquirer is the financial institution that accepts payments for the products or services on behalf of a merchant. A bank and a Visa & MasterCard member, the acquirer bills the merchant and can terminate the relationship if it is deemed too risky. Most acquirers don’t do business directly with merchants, choosing instead to work with intermediaries. These intermediaries are the merchant services providers who take on the risk involved with payment processing when the banks are unwilling to do so. As a business, you benefit because MSPs generally offer merchants lower rates than banks that would otherwise charge very high fees, or flat out not take you on as a client.

The issuer is the financial institution that lends money to the cardholder. The rate for each transaction, known as interchange, is determined by the issuer of the card (Visa, MasterCard) and depends on the card code.

The merchant services provider (MSP) is an organization that offers merchant accounts and provides payment processing services. An MSP can be a merchant bank or an independent sales organization (ISO) sponsored by the member acquiring bank.

Interchange rate is a fee that the acquiring bank pays to the issuing bank during a transaction (that uses the MasterCard or Visa network). Your merchant services provider must pay for this fee charged by credit card companies. If you’re a small to medium sized business, you may not always be told about the Interchange rate, but instead have it combined into a single discount rate. Merchant service providers only have so much leeway in pricing because they have no control over Interchange.

Dues & Assessments are uniform fees merchants pay on all transactions, collected by the acquiring bank on behalf of Visa and MasterCard in order to finance their operations and payment network upgrades.

A Payment gateway is an e-commerce interface which allows you to connect your online store to your internet merchant account, so you can accept credit cards. The payment gateway is the online version of a brick and mortar retailer’s point-of-sale terminal.

 The Processor is divided between front-end and back-end. The front-end processor simply authorizes data, while the back-end receives the authorization, processes it and passes it on to the acquiring bank for settlement to be paid out accordingly.

Visa and MasterCard are associations offering memberships to qualified banks as an issuer and/or acquirer. They set interchange rules and provide the infrastructure for the exchange of funds and data.

3. Uncover the Truth Behind Your Fees

Very few merchants realize exactly where their fees are going. Did you know that interchange is a fixed fee that is set solely by Visa and MasterCard? And while interchange accounts for the bulk of your rates, there are multiple processor and gateway fees, not to mention downgrade costs that ultimately affect your bottom line.

Risk-sharing is the banks’ method of operation, which is the reason they partner with merchant service providers who are willing to take on part or all of the risk involved in processing payments. This is why it’s important to speak with your provider and find out what factors in your business affect your risk, and consequently your rates. The lessons learned are that understanding fees, reducing risks and having the right merchant services provider can help lower your rates. The smart move for any business is to get a free rate analysis from a provider familiar with your industry.

For more information:

USA: www.PivotalPayments.com

Canada: www.PivotalPayments.ca

Last April 13, 2010, Sony Ericsson announced their new pair of mobile phones – the Sony Ericsson Spiro and Zylo. These two handsets are the company’s latest additions to their portfolio of Walkman phones. According to the official press release of the company, ever since the product launch of the Walkman phones in 2005, the company has sold over 130 million mobile phones.

Jenny Maltesson, the Marketing Business Manager of Sony Ericsson, said in a statement that today, there is still a great appetite from consumers for Walkman phones. They intend to satisfy the demand by selling this duo of Walkman phones. The phones are set to be released into the market sometime during third quarter of the year. It is expected to be set at an affordable price.

The Pair

These two new mobile phones aim to give consumers only the finest experience when it comes to music. Although mobile phone users expect the phones to contain only the Walkman player, the company decided to integrate into the phone some applications for social networking. Users can access their favorite networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Through these phones, they can stay connected with their friends and receive updates while listening to their favorite songs.

Another knock out from these phones is the TrackID feature. Music lovers can access the name of the song they’re currently hearing, as well as the artist through the TrackID function. This application is such a hit among consumers that in 2009 alone, there has been around 129 million lookups.

Spiro Design

The design of this mobile phone provides a curvature that enables users to handle the phone with more ease. The phone comes with a slide out keypad that allows users to type texts and messages easily into the phone. It comes with dimensions of 92 x 48 x 16.8 mm. It’s also lighter than most phones since it only weighs 90 grams.

This handset’s screen is a 2.2 inch TFT screen with resolution of 240 x 320 pixels. It can display a total of 256K colors.

For hands free communication and tuning in to music, the phone has a 3.5 mm audio jack. The Photocall feature of the phone lets users put pictures into their contacts. The picture is displayed whenever the contact gets in touch with the user.

The phone comes with a 5 MB storage capacity. This memory can be further expanded through the microSD since the phone has slot for such cards.
Although the phone does not support 3G technology and WLAN WiFi, it has Class 10 GPRS and EDGE for data communication and internet access. The phone also has Bluetooth connectivity and microUSB for wireless and cabled connections to other gadgets.

The phone has a 2-megapixel camera with 1600 x 1200 pixels. This camera can also be used for recording videos.

Conclusion

This Walkman phone may not have most of the features of high end smartphones out in the market. Nonetheless, it is still able to provide users with music and audio capabilities, as well as networking features. Find the best Sony Spiro deals and the best Sony Ericsson Zylo offers at Moby1 where you can also find the greatest mobile phone free gifts deals.

I’ve been looking for a mailbox for my parents as a gift. Mailboxandbeyond.com have a great range of top quality residential mailboxes in a range colors, as well as a new range of address plaques. Address plaques come in two sizes – one for larger homes that can be seen at a distance, as well as standard and petite sizes.

When buying address plaques, it’s important to take into account the scale and color of the plaque to match them to your exterior house colors. Other things to consider are do you want the street name on the plaque as well as the house number, or what about your family or business name?

Their range of mailboxes is big and varied – anything from a wall mounted box to a curbside pedestal mailbox. They can even custom make a mailbox for you. There are also high security mailboxes for corporate use. My favorite are the lovely whitehall mailboxes designs. They also have a lowest price guarantee that is worth checking out.