Posts

How to Streamline Your Online Business’s Payment Processing

Image
There are so many considerations, concerns, complicating details, and unforeseen hurdles accompanying the running of a business that it can be easy to overlook features that could either help or hinder your business’s success. In this case, that feature is payment processing. A user-friendly, streamlined payment processing infrastructure can prove to be a revenue driver by increasing conversions,while a poorly managed system can turn off and drive away consumers, leaving your business with a lot of missed opportunity and abandoned shopping carts. Don’t Exclude Payment Methods or Processing Options Consumers have become so accustomed to having multiple payment options that any business with a payment processing solution that does not support multiple sources of payment could suffer. To maximize conversions, incorporate both domestic and international payment processing . Credit and debit cards are obviously a must, but some consumers prefer additional payment alterna

The Future of Virtual Reality Commerce

Image
Despite the increasingly user-friendly, effective, intuitive, and affordable virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) platforms, they’re still occasionally dismissed as technological novelties. The thing is, people who have used VR technology are generally not among those who dismiss it. Those who’ve experienced what VR is capable of tend to agree that it’s a technology in the infancy of its eventual larger cultural influence.It’s an opinion shared by a large portion of the tech community and those who invest in it. That investment and adoption of VR technology has increased every year, and there’s no reason to think it won’t continue to trend that direction. There is a handy basis for comparison that VR proponents often cite to VR skeptics: the smartphone. There was a smartphone-averse population when the hand held smart devices and mini tablets that would become smartphones were introduced. They were expensive, and a minority of the population were the excit

Tips for Protecting Your Online Business From Debit and Credit Card Fraud

Image
In 2017, online shoppers spent $453.46 billion in the United States alone. With profit potential that great, every business with a product or service that can be offered online is either doing so or risking being left behind.Wherever there’s money to be made, however, there are people rushing to learn how best to steal it. The ubiquity of plastic as the payment method of choice online has resulted in a thriving underworld industry of debit and credit card fraud. And unfortunately for online vendors, one of the most common forms of card fraud is “card not present” theft. Online vendors don’t have the luxury of checking ID to be sure the names match. That being said, there are a number of relatively simple steps that e-merchants can take to mitigate the risk of online card fraud. Tokenization One of the best ways in general to reduce fraud risk is to contract with a trusted, established payment processing institution. An experienced payment processing firm should be

The Most Common Debit and Credit Card Fraud Risks for Brick-and-Mortar Businesses

Image
Ecommerce has emerged as a monumental market presence, and along with it, the vast, destructive shadow world of hacking and digital fraud has evolved equally as rapidly. Neither of these trends should be overlooked by brick-and-mortar business owners, whose very livelihoods depend on addressing potential threats to their businesses. Unfortunately, it’s often the proprietors and managers of brick-and-mortar businesses themselves overlooking said vulnerabilities. And in an age of mobile payment processing and dynamic points of sale, it can be an expensive oversight. But it’s not that these people are necessarily lax or indifferent about security. It’s not uncommon for a location’s management and even risk-management policymakers to invest in robust loss-prevention strategies and institute strict check-vetting and acceptance, while overlooking one of the most common, insidious, and expensive security vulnerabilities: debit and credit card fraud. Fortunately, there are

Is the Wallet Card the Credit Card of the Future?

Image
If you haven’t heard of the Wallet Card yet, chances are you will soon. Unveiled in early 2018 by Dynamics and Visa, the Dynamics Wallet Card™ has been generating an impressive amount of buzz. It’s been written up in numerous articles and has won several awards. One of those was the 2018 Best of Innovation Award at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, widely considered the consumer electronics industry’s most prestigious award. It’s the first time a payments consortium has won it. That’s a lot of exposure and expectation for any new product or technology. All too often, products that are subject to that much hype wither away into obscurity under the glare of that much scrutiny and anticipation. So what is the Wallet Card and will it be the “next big thing” in consumer finance?  What the Wallet Card Is and Does The Wallet Card has the capacity to be all of your payment cards: debit, credit, pre-paid and one-time use, even branded loyalty and gift cards, all

Will We See a Cashless Society? The Pros and Cons

Image
For a lot of people, it can feel as though they’re participants in a cashless society already. Their paychecks are direct-deposited into an account from which bills are automatically debited. They also regularly make payments (in-person and online) with without ever handling cold-hard cash.  Virtually every business accepts plastic, and you can slide or insert a card to buy a candy bar on almost any new vending machine. And with the ubiquity of mobile payment processing devices plugged into cell phones, you could likely buy from four different vendors at the local farmers’ market without ever touching paper money. That being said, our society is anything but cashless. Most people still carry cash, use cash, and take it for granted as a still-relevant staple of societal financial interactions. But as common as cash remains, the technological, societal, and even global trend has certainly been moving steadily into a more cash-free space. So will we see a cashless s

Global B2C Ecommerce is Expected to Grow to $1 Trillion by 2020

Image
Is your business ready to tap into the international ecommerce market? If not, you could be losing out on access to millions of potential consumers and their online purchases. The global business-to-consumer ecommerce market was valued at $230 billion in 2014, but is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2020, according to a report from global consulting firm Accenture and Ali Research, the research arm of Alibaba Group. This marks a pivotal opportunity for small- and mid-sized firms and global entrepreneurs who are interested in tapping into emerging markets. Cross-border ecommerce is a segment of the globalB2C market where consumers make online purchases from businesses physically located in other countries. One of the easiest and most secure ways to facilitate global ecommerce is through an international payment processing system. Experts estimate that by 2020, international ecommerce will account for almost 30% of global B2C purchases. According to the report, more