When you open a merchant account with an independent payment processor you’re actually entering into a contract that will see you working with these people for possibly a number of years. This is the reason you need to make a careful decision when you’re choosing a merchant accounts provider.

The merchant world is filled with companies, who will charge you inordinate fees and make you jump through hoops to get your money, but there are companies out there that are the real deal and can genuinely help you get what you need; you just need to look in the right places. This should give you the merchant accounts information you need to make an informed decision about who to employ to enable card processing:

• Customer service. This is by far one of the most important features of any merchant accounts provider. A good payment processing merchant accounts provider will have 24 hour customer service based in the UK, and what’s more is that the staff who man the phones will be adequately trained to deal with your problem. If in the event they cannot sort out a problem on your account or with your terminal (which is more common) they should arrange for appropriate action to take place; for example, the immediate replacement of any faulty terminals.


• Reasonable merchant fees. In a merchant world dominated by the debit and credit card these days, there are sadly those companies that will exploit this fact and charge enormous fees for credit card acceptance. There are companies out there that can give you low merchant rates and even cap those rates for the duration of your contract with them. This allows businesses to grow and pretty much guarantees that they’ll sign up for a longer length of time when their contract expires. Many other payment processing companies and banks raise their merchant fees more than once or twice a year.

Those two things shouldn’t be too much to ask for should they? But you would be surprised at how many payment processing companies in the merchant world actually don’t do this. So if you’re looking to accept credit and debit cards or have any questions about merchant accounts information you should contact as many processing companies as you can and make yourself a little comparison before you choose.

Capped rates
We offer fixed prices for the duration of your contract. No hidden costs. No price increases.

24/7 Service
We provide UK based support when your business needs it.

Quick setup
Be set up in days, not weeks. We do all the work for you so there is no disruption to your business.

To find out more about how we can help your business:

Call 0800 540 7070   or   

Essentially this is an accept credit card news blog post that should give you an idea about how to proceed when you want to begin using the new payment methods available to you from an independent payment processor. An independent payment processor can set you up a merchant account and have debit and credit card terminals in your place of business in a matter of days after signing up.

How to accept a credit card

The actual process of accepting credit cards is very simple really. Once you’ve opened a merchant account with an independent payment processor and you get your terminals, you’re ready to go. The customer enters their debit or credit card into the machine followed by their PIN number. This makes the payment. The payment information is sent via secure SSL servers to the payment processing company who then transfer the enquiry to the customer’s card issuing bank for an answer as to whether or not there are available funds on their credit card account or in their bank account. The decision is returned to the retailer and any funds are taken and deposited in the retailer’s business bank account.

Accept a credit card

The sign up procedure is pretty simple; all you need to do is find the right processing company for your needs. There are so many companies that can help you accept credit cards and debit cards, but they’re not all suitable. You should consider what times your business is open and choose a processor that has 24 hour customer service if you’re outside of the usual office hours. You also might want to consider a processing company that can offer you capped rates for the length of your contract. There are many benefits from various companies so it’s best to make a good list of what you need before you even start enquiring.

Conclusion

Your business needs to be set up quickly, so you need a payment processing company that can act fast. You simply have to shop around a little before you make a decision in order to get the quickest and best deal available.

Capped rates
We offer fixed prices for the duration of your contract. No hidden costs. No price increases.

24/7 Service
We provide UK based support when your business needs it.

Quick setup
Be set up in days, not weeks. We do all the work for you so there is no disruption to your business.

To find out more about how we can help your business:

Call 0800 540 7070   or   

With all these modern day marketing angles people keep coming up with to capture their target demographic, the more traditional forms of advertising often seem to have been left by the wayside. This is sometimes because of genuinely good reasons such as expenses or other practical reasons, but often this is solely because those tried and tested techniques have been forgotten.

Radio

It’s amazing how many people still listen to local radio these days. Local news and weather will always attract people to the radio because it’s an excellent form of entertainment and information whilst they are busy and/or on the move. It’s important not to forget those drivers every morning or the busy parents getting the kids ready for school; in fact anyone. These people are your target audience and they’re also local.

Promotions

If you have a high street store for example, the local radio can often be one of the best places to advertise promotions and sales etc. Those who hear the radio broadcast will be local to you and the expense might not be nearly as bad as you think when you offset it with the amount of extra business you are likely to receive.

Leaflets and flyers

We’ve all mindlessly taken flyers off people in the street before haven’t we? Some of them get read, but most of them either get pushed into a pocket or thrown into the bin. However, the costs of this form of marketing are very low indeed. Basically all you need to do is pay for the printing and then someone to hand them out. You don’t really need professional distributors to hand them out in the street; often college or university students do the job just as well and for much less money. Remember, in many cases you’ll only need to convert a very small percentage of those people who are handed flyers in order to make your money back.

Conclusion

Often some of the most effective, and indeed cost effective, marketing strategies are the oldest. Once we’ve all decided to stop thinking of the next “new thing” to sell our products, we may just realise that as a nation we’ve been selling successfully for years using very old tried and tested methods. Sometimes when everyone is bolting headlong into the future it’s actually time to learn from history.

Capped rates
We offer fixed prices for the duration of your contract. No hidden costs. No price increases.

24/7 Service
We provide UK based support when your business needs it.

Quick setup
Be set up in days, not weeks. We do all the work for you so there is no disruption to your business.

To find out more about how we can help your business:

Call 0800 540 7070   or   

Email payment processing may not be very common but it is an option many businesses are using at the moment, and it’s a popular interim payment option for websites when they are in the process of setting up payment options that involve payment gateways. Email payments are basically a way to send card information to the retailer in order to process a payment for goods and/or services through a virtual terminal in the same way as you process a payment over the phone.

A virtual terminal?

Yes. A virtual terminal is a card terminal that only exists virtually for the customer, simply because they can’t see it or be there at the point of sale whilst the card details are being entered. A card terminal doesn’t have to work using the card insert all the time, it can also work by one person at the end of the phone or email by entering the card number into the machine manually.

It may not always be the securest of systems, but email payment processing is a good viable option for many businesses and it’s an excellent starting point for many businesses in the process of setting up. If you have a new website, and you have your products advertised you can process payments quickly and easily via a virtual terminal by offering your customers payment options via: email, phone or even post.

Every one of these options revolves around the virtual terminal and they are simply a means of getting the card information to the retailer. Payments by email are often preferred because they’re not as slow as mail order and they are less personal than telephone payments; not everyone likes to talk on the telephone to operators in order to process their orders.

Conclusion

To begin processing payments by email you need to have a virtual terminal set up. For this you need to open an account with an independent payment processor who can set you up a merchant account and have a card terminal with you and ready to go within a week.

Capped rates
We offer fixed prices for the duration of your contract. No hidden costs. No price increases.

24/7 Service
We provide UK based support when your business needs it.

Quick setup
Be set up in days, not weeks. We do all the work for you so there is no disruption to your business.

To find out more about how we can help your business:

Call 0800 540 7070   or   

When you’re looking for a good merchant account for your payment processing needs you need to consider a whole lot more than the price. Merchant accounts may be cheap to set up and run, but you can come up against an awful lot of problems with them too. The best merchant accounts will usually have many things that make them good. We’ve taken the time to put together an article that identifies all the points you should consider when looking for the best merchant account.

Merchant fees

Obviously merchant fees are important. You should consider several things however when looking into these fees. The fees will vary from provider to provider and they will also differ from fixed rate fees to percentage fees. Basically you need to consider which is going to be best for you and the type of transactions you are likely to put through your merchant account. Another thing you need to make a note of is whether or not the independent payment processor you’re looking at has different merchant fees for some payment cards and consider the type of payment cards you accept in your place of business. If you have lots of tourists for example you may expect a lot of Mastercard and Amex payments.

Leasing costs

Each payment processor will be different when it comes to leasing you credit card machines too. The best merchant accounts will have reasonable leasing costs and they will be contingent with what the type of credit card machine. Many merchant accounts don’t provide their own card machines, they lease them from a separate company.

Customer service

This is a very important issue and has nothing to do with costs at all. However, when you’re looking for the best merchant account this is certainly something you could do with considering very carefully. Customer service with the best merchant accounts always has well trained staff ready to answer your calls whenever you need them. Some merchant account providers pay call centres in another part of the world and provide scripted answers to ordinary problems, but when something out of the ordinary happens the customer is left with no help at all. So it’s a good idea to look for a payment processor with UK call centres that are open 24 hours a day if you can find one.

Offers

Other good things to look out for are offers that may be available at various different payment processing companies. They often have to do this because it’s a competitive industry and they are always looking for a way to better their competitors. For example, some may offer you capped rates for the duration of your contract. This offer is excellent for new businesses who want to keep an eye on their expenditure in the beginning.

Conclusion

The best thing is to just call as many as you can and eventually you’ll find the best merchant account for your business. Remember that it’s not all about the merchant fees.

Capped rates
We offer fixed prices for the duration of your contract. No hidden costs. No price increases.

24/7 Service
We provide UK based support when your business needs it.

Quick setup
Be set up in days, not weeks. We do all the work for you so there is no disruption to your business.

To find out more about how we can help your business:

Call 0800 540 7070   or   

This brief article concentrates on the things you should be looking for when looking at examining merchant accounts and e-commerce merchant account reviews. There are a number of websites out there offering merchant account reviews and ecommerce merchant account reviews, but not all of them concentrate on the important things.

What are the important things to look out for?

Good merchant account reviews will concentrate not only on the individual qualities of each payment processing company and what they can offer, but also on a comparison of their services and unique selling points with other similar companies. For example you may come across merchant account reviews that tell you how an individual payment processing merchant account offers capped rates and that not many others offer this. However, it might not compare this service with one of the companies that do offer it and may perhaps offer extended capped rates for the duration of the contract, and not simply as an introductory offer. Impartial comparisons are always best.

E-Commerce merchant account reviews

When it comes to e-commerce merchant account reviews the game changes a little and there are other things you need to be looking at; but again, concentrating more on the comparison side of things is very important indeed.

When it comes to e-commerce merchant account reviews, you simply can’t ignore the payment gateway services. These are very important, and as well as set up prices etc, you need to know that anyone offering a payment gateway is offering a secure one. In actual fact you may find that the majority of independent payment processors you go to will offer e-commerce payment solutions too, whether they’re done through a satellite company or not; and your payment processor will usually be able to highly recommend them because they will have used them on numerous occasions before with other clients.

Conclusion

For the very best merchant account reviews and e-commerce merchant account reviews it’s always best to look for those who compare services and not just list them. This is the only way you will be able to make an informed decision about which payment processor to sign up with.

Capped rates
We offer fixed prices for the duration of your contract. No hidden costs. No price increases.

24/7 Service
We provide UK based support when your business needs it.

Quick setup
Be set up in days, not weeks. We do all the work for you so there is no disruption to your business.

To find out more about how we can help your business:

Call 0800 540 7070   or   

There are a number of things you need to concentrate on if you plan to expand your business. It’s not all about just taking out a massive loan or securing some other funding and simply spending it on bigger premises and hiring more staff for example. You need a logical progression of events so that you don’t get caught out by anything. An awful lot of expansions go terribly wrong because they were not planned carefully.

The business plan

You should really have a business plan, especially if you have already secured money from the bank for your business; there are few places you’ll secure finance without proving you actually have a plan in which to repay it. The business plan is something every business has in order to stay on track and make sensible changes at the right time, according to the plan. This should have been drawn up in the beginning, but if you haven’t got one there is no stopping you making a plan now for the future of your business.

However, for the moment let us concentrate on expansion. In order to successfully do this you will, as we have already mentioned, need a plan. This is where it becomes a good idea to make a separate plan, solely for expansion only. Ensure that your business expansion plan is written up properly and looks good, without any errors; it’s an important document and you may need to show it to outside investors.

Summary

You should begin with a summary of the business, its assets and its goals. Concentrate on the following things:

• List your current facilities: premises, equipment, vehicles etc
• List your employees
• Your business goals (mainly taken from your original business plan)
• Notable successes and failures
• All the details about your business expansion and how you propose to do it in a summary form.

General business information

If this expansion plan is going to be offered to outside investors in an attempt to secure funding you will need to outline what your business does and how it goes about it:

• Do not go into too much detail about the business, but do tell the reader what you do and how you do it.
• Outline how any of the daily routines will be altered by the expansion

Competition

This is a major concern for any business, and also for an outside investor. If there are too many competitors it could cause problems if you’re trying to secure funding for your expansion, so this is a good reason to talk about them in your plan:

• Describe what competition you have and how they are doing in comparison to you
• Outline how different you are from your competition and where your strengths and weaknesses are
• Outline how your expansion will improve your position over your competition

Financial information

You need to include financial information in order to show how well the business is doing or how it can improve financially with an injection of capital in the right place to expand:

• Include business statements as an appendix to your plan
• Outline the cost of your proposed expansion
• Make sure you have income and expenditure included and the overall value of your business

Why have an expansion plan?

The main reason to have a plan is to follow it in order to succeed, but if you are also seeking finance from a bank or other outside investor perhaps, then you’re going to need to show them that you know what you are talking about. Simply telling someone what your plan is without any details and data will not inspire them to give you any money at all.

Another more fundamental reason why you should have an expansion plan is because just writing it can identify problems before you even start, and the process itself may even reflect that it is not a good time to expand. Planning things theoretically on paper will always be a good idea before actually doing it.

Capped rates
We offer fixed prices for the duration of your contract. No hidden costs. No price increases.

24/7 Service
We provide UK based support when your business needs it.

Quick setup
Be set up in days, not weeks. We do all the work for you so there is no disruption to your business.

To find out more about how we can help your business:

Call 0800 540 7070   or   

With the loss of the cheque guarantee card and the increased preference of debit and credit cards among consumers most retail and service industries are turning to more secure card payment systems like the Chip and PIN card terminal. The new Chip and PIN terminals are a more secure payment system that the previous card payment procedure that required a signature, simply because there is no room for fraud.

Even if someone were to get hold of your card they couldn’t use it in a store to make a purchase without your PIN number. Virtually every retail store on the high street has these secure payment systems. The only opportunity someone would have of making a payment on your card would be to use it to place a telephone order, but this is highly unlikely since they would need to know other personal details about you and they would still have to provide a delivery address for their goods; thus leaving a trail straight back to them.

Online secure payment systems

Online secure payment systems differ obviously because the customer cannot be present at the point of sale. Therefore the majority of internet payments with a card are done through a payment gateway. When you visit a site such as Amazon, or Tesco, or any other large online retailer, you will have a screen on which to enter your financial information. This screen is encrypted so no-one can hack it to view, and the information is sent to the payment processor and to the card issuing bank etc via what they call an SSL connection. This is the securest connection you can get online and it’s encrypted so well, that again, no-one could access your information.

Conclusion

So to take card payments these days is one of the safest ways to take payment for goods and services, both on and offline. Secure payment systems couldn’t really get much more secure.

Capped rates
We offer fixed prices for the duration of your contract. No hidden costs. No price increases.

24/7 Service
We provide UK based support when your business needs it.

Quick setup
Be set up in days, not weeks. We do all the work for you so there is no disruption to your business.

To find out more about how we can help your business:

Call 0800 540 7070   or   

It’s easier than most new businesses think to sign up for a merchant account. In many cases it’s as simple as making a few phone calls to a number of different processors in order to get a good price and then signing on the dotted line (so to speak) with the one that suits your business best of all.

This is the only difficult thing really. You need to be quite open and assertive when you’re making your enquiries in order to get the best card processing. It doesn’t hurt to know what you want and how to get it when it comes to card acceptance, and the majority of payment processing companies will appreciate as much information as you can give. This is because they will be in a better position to advise you and tell you what they can do for you.

What to look for

Here is a list of things that you should really concentrate on finding when it comes to choosing a payment processor:

• Capped fees for the duration of your contract. This will give you a considerable advantage over the competition because whilst their payment processing fees are being raised yours will stay the same.
• 24 hour customer service. If you have a business that operates outside of the standard “office” hours then you’ll need a processor that has a customer service team that does the same.
• UK call centres. UK call centres are preferred by many businesses these days simply because customer service for UK companies really needs to come from the UK and not where English isn’t the first language.

Switching

If you’re already signed with an independent payment processor then you can switch very easily indeed. Even the best payment processing changes sometimes, and you need to keep an eye on the services being offered in case you can get a better deal elsewhere; this is the only way you’ll identify the best card processors. Switching is as simple as calling up the processor you want to handle your payments and telling them that you want to switch to them. They should be able to do all the work for you without any trouble at all.

Conclusion

So call as many payment processors as you can in order to get a whole host of quotes. Be sure to pay attention to the three points we highlighted and ask questions that are relevant to your actual business. This way you’ll be sure to find the best card processing.

Capped rates
We offer fixed prices for the duration of your contract. No hidden costs. No price increases.

24/7 Service
We provide UK based support when your business needs it.

Quick setup
Be set up in days, not weeks. We do all the work for you so there is no disruption to your business.

To find out more about how we can help your business:

Call 0800 540 7070   or   

In this age of competitive trading we need to make sure that the customers we have managed to encourage to our stores, website and wherever else will stay with us and not decide to try someone else. There are several tried and tested ways of retaining your customers and this article aims to outline a few of them and perhaps identify something new along the way.

Rewards

Rewards have been used for a long time. Perhaps the most common business to use reward schemes would be the supermarket, and we can all name a major chain or two that use them very effectively indeed. However, it needn’t always be the big players on the market who use things like loyalty points and other reward schemes; they are just as easily translatable to the SME end of the market (Small and Medium Enterprises).

Smaller businesses may wish to use a smaller version of loyalty schemes. They could perhaps stamp a card for a customer when they spend over a certain amount of money, with a view to offering a discount when the customer’s card is full. This system works well on an admission business too. Every four paid admissions grants one free for example.

There are many different reward schemes that can become very successful, it’s all about viewing the business carefully to see what might work. It’s also worth keeping a close eye on your competition to see what they’re doing to retain their customers.

Complaints

Complaints are a big reason why customers try somewhere else. However, they are also more likely to stay with a business that has successfully resolved a complaint or problem brought to their attention by a customer. You should never assume that because a customer has made a complaint that they will never use you again; the chances are that they will if you get it right. Listen to their complaint seriously and take proactive steps to resolve it. If compensation is due then ensure it is sufficient and that your customer is satisfied.

Tell them about it

If you’re in a position to send out newsletters or have information willingly given to you by your customers you can send them your new ideas and offers via email or postal services. Many people won’t bother to read them, but it only takes a few to make a difference, and you’d be surprised at how special you can make a person feel by sending them an email to their name advertising products related to things they have bought before. It’s certainly worthwhile and doesn’t cost the earth.

Conclusion

In order to better understand your customers you should also consider surveys and things like that to get their information. If you can put together a profile of your customer base that relates to products sold then you have a valuable source of information, not only to retain customers but also to get more of them. Consider a prize draw to get information etc; just make sure you make your customer aware what you intend to do with their information.

Whichever methods you use you are sure to retain some customers. If you fail to do anything to make your business appeal then you are likely to fail and lose your customers to your competition; who may well be paying better attention than you.

Capped rates
We offer fixed prices for the duration of your contract. No hidden costs. No price increases.

24/7 Service
We provide UK based support when your business needs it.

Quick setup
Be set up in days, not weeks. We do all the work for you so there is no disruption to your business.

To find out more about how we can help your business:

Call 0800 540 7070   or