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One of the biggest challenges for a small business is competing with larger businesses with greater resources. One proven strategy for leveling the playing field is to accept credit cards. After all, Federal Reserve data released in 2014 revealed that 72 percent of consumers had at least one credit card. That’s a huge market that […]

Credit card processing is a broad term that encompasses several electronic payment card categories: credit cards of all stripes (“plain vanilla”, rewards, corporate), debit cards (signature and PIN), EBT (electronic benefits transfer), gift and loyalty cards. Another option that’s growing in popularity is the prepaid card. A prepaid card is actually a secured card because

There’s no way around it. People are overwhelmed with email. And with 205.6 billion emails sent per day — 112.5 billion of which are business related — “overwhelmed” is probably too polite a word. As a result, getting your own emails opened, read, and responded to is harder than ever. In fact, of all the business

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) is warning business owners about a new scam that has surfaced in some parts of the U.S. It’s related to the ongoing rollout of microchip-embedded EMV® payment cards and a fraudulent activity known as slamming. Slamming, as defined by the BBB, is a deceptive sales practice intended to switch a

Consider for a moment that one of your employees comes to you with what they consider to be a brilliant strategy: Stop charging for your product and give it away instead. When you question his logic, he insists that his approach will increase business tenfold. After all, just imagine all the customers you’d have when

In the last year or so, live video has become the talk of the town as it pertains to social media marketing. First, there was Meerkat and Periscope. Then there was Facebook Live. And now, Snapchat is taking over with over 200 million active monthly users. This begs the question – should businesses be using

Snags in the EMV certification process continue to delay the transition to chip cards in the United States. Now a U.S. Senator has asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to get involved to help protect vulnerable small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and consumers. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) sent a letter to FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez

All businesses that accept payment cards are vulnerable to chargebacks, or a customer-initiated reversal of an electronic payment. Chargebacks can be a time consuming and expensive part of doing business, but there are ways to limit their impact. A chargeback occurs when a cardholder disputes a transaction directly with the card issuer, bypassing the merchant. There

As you may very well know, social media isn’t always easy to handle when it comes to marketing your business. You’ve read article after article on how to succeed and maintain relevancy in the social media world, but it can be hard to keep up with the ever-changing platforms. What follows are seven social media

The Need for a Customer Retention Strategy Depending on the study and industry, the cost of acquiring a new customer can cost as much as five to seven times more than retaining an existing customer. Unfortunately, only 40 percent of companies actually have an equal focus on acquisition and retention. Sadly, the majority of businesses