In January, MasterCard made an effort to enforce new regulations and best practice guidelines pertaining to online direct marketing – specifically “negative option” marketing, which they consider to be a “brand damaging” practice.  The FTC Negative Option staff report, featuring five key marketing principles, triggered both Visa and MasterCard to make changes to their operating guidelines. Continue reading "Card Association Response to Updated FTC Regulations"

1-800-Flowers is paving the way, yet again, for retailers to reach consumers. The company has jumped on the Facebook bandwagon and is taking advantage of the viral social networking phenomenon. In late July, they became the first store to sell their products directly through Facebook, via a Facebook application. They simply added a “Shop” tab to their page where users can shop, purchase, and ship, all without leaving Facebook. Continue reading "New Avenues For E-Commerce"

Answer:  Offer alternative payment options

Okay, so what exactly does that mean?  Well, traditionally, merchants only had the option of accepting electronic payments online in the form of bank drafts, and debit and credit cards from the major card brands – Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Diners Club and JCB.  That is until payment product innovators discovered that merchants were losing potential business from consumers who did not have bank accounts or credit cards.  Most importantly, in the ecommerce space, some consumers are simply wary of using cards and bank account information for online transactions because of the fraud risk.  Most of this concern stems from consumers’ lack of trust in web site security.  Additionally, with card companies cutting cardholder credit limits, alternative payment methods are the only option. Continue reading "Want To Gain More Online Customers?"

Forrester Research, an independent technology and market research company that provides advice about technology’s impact on business and consumers, recently released estimates on ecommerce growth over the next four years. As we see and read about traditional sales dropping all across the nation, ecommerce will continue to grab the lost market share. Forrester said, “When we asked where consumers would shift their retail dollars, the channels with the greatest shifts were the mass merchants, warehouse clubs, and web retailers.”

There are still some advantages to retail shopping, such as many people like the ability to see and touch what they are buying. However, that will not stop online sales from reaching as high as $176.9 Billion in 2010. Amazon.com and eBay have significantly discounted their merchandise over the past year to compete with retail stores. The National Retail Foundation forecasts that traditional retail sales will drop .5% in 2009.

Continue reading "Ecommerce Sales Grow as Retail Stores Shrink"

Online shopping is at an all time high. According to The Nielsen Report, over 875 million consumers have shopped online. This is up 40% in the last two years. The most purchased items are books, clothes, accessories, video games, airline tickets and electronic equipment. While 2008 holiday purchases at retail locations were down 5 percent, shopping on the internet was up 15 percent, on Cyber Monday alone. If your business is not online you are missing out on huge potential profits.

Once your business is online and your shopping cart has been built, you have to select a payment gateway. Many merchants select their payment gateway based on what their merchant services provider tells them. There are hundreds of payment gateway options out there, and not all of them measure up.

A gateway facilitates your online payments by connecting your secure order from your merchant account to a processing bank. Something as important as the transfer of money should take some research. When selecting a gateway, consider available features, reliability, and support.

Continue reading "Does Your Payment Gateway Measure Up?"

Secure Electronic Transactions (SET) is an open protocol which has the potential to play a large role and dominate the market in providing secure electronic transactions. Jointly, Visa and MasterCard and vendors such as IBM have worked to create SET as an open standard for protecting the privacy, and ensuring the authenticity, of electronic transactions. SET is critical to the success of electronic commerce over the Internet; without having a system for authenticating consumers and merchants, it leaves all parties involved vulnerable. Security measures need to come from the top down, and bring uniformity to each industry. SET may sound like a necessity, but has not been popular in the United States.

Consumers in the United States spend billions of dollars over the internet each year, and it is reported by MasterCard that the majority of the purchases are made without using SET. Most merchants who sell over the internet are using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) for their internet stores. Typically this would be enough, but fraud is on the rise.  The economy is contributing to increased instances of internet theft and identity theft.

Continue reading "SET Technology is Back on Visa and MasterCard’s Plate"

According to the Federal Reserve, American’s total credit card debt has reached $951.7 billion – up 8.2 percent from a year ago and the highest ever recorded. This may sound like good news for the Acquirer industry but it may have a bad spiral effect. Some may speculate that our financial situation started with real estate developers and individuals flipping houses. Perhaps it was our poor lending guidelines? When I heard that the House voted against the government financial bailout I realized it was only a matter of time before our nation’s financial situation affected the payment processing industry.

As more and more financial institutions struggle and the unemployment rate begin to increase, issuers are going to begin offering less credit to card holders. This means that less people are going to have the ability to make purchases. Many business owners will be impacted by less spending.

Some options many merchants are turning to are:

Continue reading "Merchant Services Affected By Financial Crisis?"

When starting a new business, most merchants generally focus on the features of their cart and how the website itself looks. We pick our colors and how much items cost. We look for how the customer will enter their order, or how we will track shipping. The most important consideration is: When customers buy your product, how do they pay you?

There are many different shopping cart options for people to choose. Every online business is different, and shopping carts are customized to fit your business needs.

First, when looking for your business’s shopping cart, it is important to know what features you would like it to accommodate. Most shopping carts can total orders, calculate tax and shipping costs, and transmit information via a payment gateway to process a sale.

Continue reading "Is One Shopping Cart Better Than Another?"