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Why Transfer Speed Matters in eCommerce

Transfer speed refers to the speed at which money is transferred between merchant accounts and customer bank accounts. Transfer speed is important, because it determines when you’re paid for the work or items you’ve sold. For small businesses, transfer speed plays a major role in operations for the first few years, as it can impact your operating expenses.

Call customer support for the payment gateway services you’re considering, and ask them how long it takes to process a particular transaction. You might find that you’re only paid once a month, or two weeks after a transaction has been approved. For many, that presents a problem.

The only way out of this dilemma is to shop around, but that’s not possible (or easy) when you’re locked into a contract with a payment processor. Make sure you inquire about payment transfer speed, and get some background information on online credit card processing.

Transfer speed also refers to the amount of time it takes for the user’s browser to load a page, which also plays a significant role in whether he or she completes a transaction. If your site is image heavy, as most eCommerce websites are, then you’re probably going to have trouble loading immediately. You can try compressing your thumbnail images, and using a caching plugin (if you’re utilizing WordPress), to speed up the time it takes for the customer to see a static page.

If you can process transactions in a reasonable amount of time, and present the customer with the Web page he or she wants to view in a decent amount of speed, then you’ll retain more customers and ultimately sell more product.


Bio: Charge.com offers a reliable method of online credit card processing with free software, and no setup fees.

Do You Still Need a Credit Card Terminal?

The future of the payment gateway is starting to look like it lies in mobile, so some businesses that are looking to cut costs have a question: is the terminal still worth it? Is the now old-fashioned cash register slowly going the way of the dodo? Before you make some snap decisions, here are some thoughts.

Terminals are Secure

Credit card processing services offer top notch encryption when moving money between accounts, and it’s only getting better. It’s true that NFC technology is also secure, but public perception of this technology isn’t very high yet. In other words, as secure as mobile is people still trust a credit card terminal just a little bit more.

Mobile payment options are getting better, but some businesses are betting big on this technology. Should you follow suit? There’s conflicting opinion on the usefulness of a POS system to a small business with only one location. You could upsell customers at your POS, and use it as the central hub of your store. However, if you have a busy day your customers will end up waiting in long lines to buy from you.

A better option is to take a hybrid approach. Use a credit card swipe machine, and a mobile unit. Deploy your staff around the store, ready to take a customer’s order with the option to get rung up at the front in a more traditional transaction. This will also prove useful for returns, and other transactions that tend to take up a lot of time.


Charge.com Payment Solutions, Inc.  is the simplest and most affordable payment gateway available online, and has been named the #1 merchant account provider for six years running.

Every Business with a Merchant Account Needs to Know About This Fee

Every-Business-with-a-Merchant-Account-Needs-to-Know-About-This-FeeMerchant accounts have two fairly common pricing tiers consisting of three and six-tiered pricing. This is by design, of course, because these are the easiest pricing tiers to explain to potential buyers. All fees present some form of risk to the merchant, but chargebacks present the greatest potential risk to banks and providers so merchants tend to feel the brunt of these the most.

Chargebacks and Refunds

There is a major difference between a chargeback and a refund. Refunds are mutual because the merchant agrees to take the purchase back and refund the buyer the money they’d spent. Refunds can include re-stocking fees as well. Chargebacks are initiated by the user and carried out between the user and the bank.

The provider can potentially be exposed to millions of dollars in unpaid debt if the merchants the provider deals with are unscrupulous. If the merchant fails to pay those costs, for whatever reason, the cardholder must pay to make the deal right.

Therefore, most merchant companies will take that risk into account when they underwrite the contract. There may be in-depth assessments of a merchant’s potential risk on the bank’s part, which is all a normal part of the process.

Some banks may also impose limits on the amount a merchant is able to charge back to a buyer. Failure to stay within these limits can lead to fines or strict regulations on the merchant’s account. That’s in addition to the chargeback fee that accompanies these transactions.

Bio: Firoz Patel is a passionate marketer and technology enthusiast who founded AlertPay Inc. in 2005. Currently, Firoz Patel lives in Quebec and oversees development of the Payza platform.

Accept credit card payments in real-time

Written by SecureNetShop

When it comes to starting your online store or accepting payments via your website, setting up a shopping cart system might be an easy task. The method has changed from the use of offline machines that would be charging for online transactions and has been made simpler because of credit card processing services.

Basically, the service would cater for all the work required on the bank end and would look after the security of the transaction and handle other issues that might crop up. These services partner with banks and other alternative payment services directly. Companies offering these credit card processing services often charge a small processing fee which could be monthly or represent a percentage of your transaction depending on the company and credit card service.

The attributes that you could be looking for in a credit card processing service are numerous. An important aspect is ease of use. It would be beneficial as you would not have to train your staff to understand your ecommerce cart software. Security is another important aspect to consider as this will reassure your customers and yourself regarding your online shopping cart.

Customer service is another important factor to look at. You would not want to be in a tough situation and have no solution to your issue, especially since transactions are often time-sensitive. Moreover, you might consider whether the service is reliable and delivers consistency.

SecureNetShop offers its customers with shopping cart systems for their online stores. The functionalities are simple and user-friendly.

Partnering with an order fulfillment service

Written by USA2Me

If you are the owner of a web store or a small business that offers postage of packages, you might find that partnering with an order fulfillment service is more cost effective than offering the service in-house. The reason behind this is that the fixed costs involved in hiring carriers and purchasing software to maintain stocks are often high. Moreover, having a warehouse where to stock products and equipment for package processing could also represent some hefty spending. Outsourcing the service, is, in comparison very cost-effective.

Some of the advantages of partnering with an order fulfillment service are that you would not have to worry about space. The fulfillment company would be able to absorb seasonal high and lows when it comes to parcel forwarding, shipping and returns. Furthermore, these companies often have agreements with major carriers and this gives them access to certain bulk discounts that they could pass on to you. The cost of these fulfillment companies remain low as they spread out their fixed costs such as rent and salaries into variable costs per order handled. This would not have been possible if you had been handling this service yourself. Partnering with a fulfillment service would also allow you to focus mainly on your business and to leave the other tasks to your partner.

There are moreover, some instances where outsourcing fulfillment services are unavoidable. For example if your company is too small to have its own warehouse or for foreign exporters.

USA2me is a company that offers mail forwarding services as well as expatriate mail service and international mail forwarding.

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