There are a number of reasons that you might find yourself unable to take credit card payments at your business. Maybe you have an issue with the machine itself, your internet goes out, or the payment network itself goes down. (It’s happened!) For small businesses, even short amounts of downtime mean lost revenue and unhappy customers. You still ha...

But the fees you pay when your customer makes a purchase by card should factor into your overall pricing strategy. Otherwise, you’re bringing in less money from each sale. In this article, I’ll talk about possible strategies to help offset costs without alienating customers. Costs of Accepting Credit Cards You probably already know that every ...

Initially called Square Connect, Square's website now just refers to online payment options with Square. What is Square Online Payments? The Square online payment options lets businesses with self-hosted / existing e-commerce websites seamlessly integrate their site with Square to accept payments and manage business data on a web-based dash...

From a business' perspective, however, chargebacks can often be a costly hassle. The burden of proof to show that a customer has been rightfully charged falls on you, and when consumers successfully dispute charges, you lose both the product sold and the revenue from that sale. Even when a dispute is unsuccessful, the acquiring bank will with...

But what are these digital wallets, exactly, and how do they work? And does your business need to do anything special to accept them? What is a digital wallet? A digital wallet refers to electronic devices and programs used for making payments for purchases digitally, without presenting a physical credit card, debit card, or cash. The term ...

The short answer is: Yes and no. The longer answer is that it depends on the type of card. You'll have to follow applicable rules as well. Credit cards: Yes. It is acceptable for you to set a minimum charge on credit card purchases as long as you abide by the stipulations as set forth in your processing agreement with Visa, Mastercard and Discove...

What is FedNow? FedNow is a real-time payment system created by the US Federal Reserve that went live in the summer of 2023. Its purpose is to enable instant money transfers between banks and other financial institutions, but there are person-to-person (P2P) elements as well. Banks could choose to allow instant payments between users, mimicking fe...

It's not really as simple as that, though. In actuality, a variety of entities are working behind the scenes, and it's the card-issuing bank that ends up taking the largest piece of the pie. The more you know about what affects your business, the better armed you are to improve your position in the market and protect your income. Before we break...

The use of cash as the de facto payment option is shrinking, and nearly 40% of Americans favor going completely cash-free. Then, in the summer of 2017, Visa stepped up a “war on cash” by offering businesses money to go cashless. While it didn't lead to the elimination of cash, it's nonetheless more common to see consumers pull out a card than cash ...

However, those days are long gone. In early 2017, Visa announced a staged digital wallet fee, which came well after Mastercard imposed a similar fee in 2013. These fees can result in higher interchange costs for small businesses. Which wallets does this affect, and will your business pay more to take digital wallets? Let’s dig into the details. ...