payment industry news
Follow the blog for all of your payment industry news. We talk about FinTech, Credit Card Processing, High-Risk Merchants, and much more. Allen Kopleman has been providing merchant accounts for small business for over 20 years. Nationwide Payment Systems provides merchant account services to local businesses in South Florida.
What Is an ISV in Payments? How Software Companies Handle and Earn From Card Payments
An ISV, short for independent software vendor, is a company that makes and sells its own software, and in payments the word is used for any software company whose customers take payments through that software or ought to....
The Merchant’s Guide to What You Really Pay for Card Processing
What you really pay for card processing is more than the percentage on your quote. It is the equipment you choose, the fees stacked inside every transaction, the add-ons that raise your effective rate, the days you wait for...
Credit Card Machine, POS System or Virtual Terminal: Which One Does a Small Business Need?
A credit card machine takes a payment and nothing else, a point-of-sale system runs the whole sale and the business behind it, and a virtual terminal lets you take a card payment from a web page with no equipment at all....
Subscription and Free-Trial Chargebacks: How to Stop Friendly Fraud Before It Costs You the Account
If you bill customers on a schedule, you will see more chargebacks than a business that sells one thing at a time, and the reasons are built into the model. Customers forget they signed up, a free trial turns into a paid...
When Will You Actually Get Paid? How Card and ACH Deposits Work and What Can Hold Up Your Money
After a customer pays you, the money does not land in your bank account that instant. A card payment is approved in seconds, grouped into a daily batch, settled through the processor and then deposited, and each step has...
Transparent Merchant Pricing: What It Means and How to Check Whether a Processor Really Offers It
Transparent merchant pricing means you can see what every part of a card payment costs, who gets each part and exactly what the processor keeps for itself. Almost every processor says it is transparent. Very few prove it...
Why Your Effective Processing Rate Is Higher Than the Rate You Were Quoted, and How to Find the Gap
Your effective rate is your total processing fees divided by your total card sales, and for many businesses it comes out higher than the rate they were quoted when they signed up. The gap is rarely one big surprise. It is...
What Payment Methods Raise the Most Money at a Fundraising Event?
No single payment method raises the most money at a fundraising event. What raises the most is a setup with no dead ends: every guest can give the moment they decide to, with whatever they have in their hand, in a few...
What Financial Records Do I Need to Keep, and for How Long?
Most small businesses need to keep the records that support their tax returns for at least three years after filing, keep employment tax records for at least four, and keep some records much longer: up to six or seven years...
Nightclub POS Systems: What They Are and How They Work
A nightclub POS system is the point of sale built for how a club actually runs: open tabs secured by a card, several bartenders working the same tabs from different stations, drink pricing that changes by the hour, VIP and...
How to Open a Business Bank Account With No Revenue History
You can open a business bank account with no revenue history, because a basic business checking account is not a loan and the bank is not judging your sales. What the bank needs is proof of who you are, proof that the...
How to Handle Sales Tax Collection in Multiple States Without a Tax Team
You can handle sales tax in several states without a tax department if you build one simple system and run it every month: know where you owe, register before you collect, let your checkout calculate the rate, park the tax...