Sharing thoughts, facts, ideas, and best practices for business owners of all kinds.
Credit Card
Partnership
Point of Sale
POS
Once you complete a sale and sign an agreement with a merchant, it’s often easy to just move onto the next one and focus on finding more of them to sign. Merchants you’ve signed tend to stay happy and complacent as long as their hardware and software are functioning properly…
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Affinity Marketing
Affinity marketing is the practice of expanding a business’ consumer base through a partnership with other businesses or organizations around mutual interests. Business owners such as yourself understand how important marketing is for your company. When done correctly through the right venues, it can be especially advantageous for your business.
Affinity
Affinity Meaning
What does “Affinity” mean? Affinity, meaning “a spontaneous or natural liking or sympathy for someone or something,” is the feeling you have for the fellow fans of your favorite team. Well, it works in business, too. Affinity, in the world of business, refers to an organization or group of people…
Cash Register
Cash Drawer
You’ve seen them, haven’t you? Every time you go to the grocery store or the gas station you see a cash drawer. Even those little hot-dog carts sometimes have them. Cash drawers: they are arguably the most important feature on a cash register. Almost every business out there has…
EMV
Chip and PIN
Chip and PIN is another name for your new EMV compliant credit card. There are many names for this new type of card: Smart card EMV card Chip card IC card No matter what you call your card, though, it has a tiny computer chip embedded in the front of…
EMV
EMV Chip
EMV is an acronym for the 3 companies who came up with smart card security standards: Europay, MasterCard, and Visa. The EMV Chip standard they came up with is a set of guidelines for chip and PIN payment cards. (Read about that standard here.) In essence, EMV makes your…
EMV
EMV Technology
For years we’ve been accustomed to our credit cards’ traditional technology here in the US. But this technology isn’t as high-tech as it used to be. Enter EMV technology, which adds a new layer of safety on our daily credit card transactions. The little magnetic stripe on the back of credit…
Business Software
Small Business Software
Small business software allows you to automate and streamline several aspects of your business. The result of this is more time on your hands, plugging up money leakage in areas such as employee theft, inventory, and taxes. There are a lot of intimidating obstacles a new business faces when trying…
Credit Card
Smart Card Reader
A smart card reader is how you swipe, or rather “dip,” to purchase something with an EMV credit card (or chip card). It looks almost exactly like a traditional credit card terminal or swiper, but it’s specifically designed to read chip cards. Credit card companies have seen the light. They…
Credit Card
Smart Credit Card
It sounds very European doesn’t it? “Smart credit card” isn’t something you traditionally hear when referring to credit cards here in the United States. The reason it might sound “foreign” to you is because for the last decade or so, foreign countries have been using smart cards instead of traditional…
Credit Card
Virtual Credit Cards
Virtual credit cards allow you to purchase goods and services anonymously online. Just sign up up for an account at a provider (listed below), deposit money onto your card(s) through your bank or credit card, and then go shopping without revealing any of your actual card information anywhere! When making…
Affinity
Affinity Diagrams
What in the world are Affinity Diagrams? Essentially, their function is visual organization of data, especially during multi-person brainstorming sessions. You’ll end up asking yourself a lot of questions you never thought you would have to when you became a business owner. There are so many things to consider when…
Customer Loyalty
Loyalty Program
You’ve probably heard of loyalty programs before. If you have not, chances are you have at least heard of club cards, loyalty cards, rewards cards, or points cards. Their use is widespread and the average US household has 21 loyalty programs. Companies try to add consumers to their loyalty programs…
The world of payments is rapidly changing in front of our eyes. Massive consolidation is happening at a record pace, and this will inevitably impact your business as a merchant services agent.