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Top Ways Merchants Can Succeed During the Holidays in 2020

COVID-19 changed so much for millions of people, but retailers were among the hardest hit. Now that the holidays are upon us, retailers must act smart and fast. What happens in the last quarter of 2020 could make or break your business.

So how can you succeed during the holidays? Check out our hottest tips.

Have an Online Presence

Every business, even small brick-and-mortar stores need an online presence. Millions of consumers will shop online this year and skip in-person shopping altogether. Not having an online presence could be the difference between staying in business or not.

If you already had a website now is a great time revamp, update, or otherwise make it better.

Make Sure your Website is Fast and User Friendly

Your website must be able to handle a lot of traffic and your staff able to handle the influx of shipments, deliveries, and returns, all while providing great customer service. If shoppers are frustrated at your website speed, they may move onto a competitor.

Aside from speed, think of user-friendliness. How easy is it to use the website? Can all customers (including new customers) find what they need quickly? Is it easy to spot where and how they can contact customer service?

Offer Valuable Services

Today, consumers want to know what you’ll do for them that goes above and beyond the norm. Sure, they can order online, but what else do you offer?

Here are a few ideas:

Curbside pickup for contactless service
Real-time inventory updates for better service
Offer more payment options including ‘buy now pay later’
Staff accordingly so you can answer customer questions, provide timely curbside pickup times, and offer any other necessary support

Market your Business

Don’t forget in the madness of the holiday rush, all the changes, and observing COVID-19 regulations, to market your business.

All businesses will be operating online and hoping for the same target audience. Find a way to stand out from the crowd. What do you have to offer that others don’t? Focus on that when you market your business.

Don’t forget to get on social media – all platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and even Tik Tok if you have a young audience. Offer specials and give other reasons to get your company ahead of the market.

Get Ahead of the Market

This year will look different than any others. Black Friday may not bring in the same numbers in-store, but you can do the same thing online. Appeal to your audience who feels more comfortable staying home and prepare yourself now.

Most customers are shopping early this year – don’t miss the opportunity to grab the sales now, earlier than ever, and build trust in your customers. Don’t use this as a time of trial and error, but rather a time to find a solution to the problem that all businesses will face today – satisfying both the in-person and online customer to the same level.

What is a payment Gateway

If you accept credit card payments you’ll likely use a payment gateway whether you accept credit cards in a brick-and-mortar store or online. The gateway is responsible for conducting the electronic transaction, much like a standard cash register would conduct a cash transaction.

Gateways are most important for online or phone transactions, check out what you should know about them. Host Merchant Services supports a wide array of payment gateway options, including Authorize.net, Network Merchants (NMI), TSYS TransIT, First Data Payeezy, SwipeSimple, Paytrace, USAePay, and almost all other commercial options.

What a Payment Gateway Does

The payment gateway takes the payment information from the consumer to the acquirer and then back to the consumer with an approval or denial of the transaction.

The payment gateway handles all aspects of the credit card transaction from securely transmitting the data from the customer to the issuing bank, back to the merchant, and eventually the customer again.

The gateway encrypts the sensitive data including the credit card number, customer’s name, and all other identifying information that if stolen could result in identity theft. The gateway does the ‘hard work’ between all parties, communicating the necessary information to conduct the transaction.

Why is a Payment Gateway Important?

Payment gateways are used most often in online transactions, otherwise known as card-not-present transactions.

Without the physical card, the risk of credit card fraud is high. Payment gateways decrease the risk though by using proper data encryption. Without it, hackers could have easy access to a customer’s banking information, which is why it’s so important for businesses to use proper gateways and PCI compliance. Customers won’t shop at businesses that doesn’t take data encryption seriously.

How it Works

It sounds complicated, but when broken down, the process is simple.

The customer makes a purchase and heads to your checkout page.
The customer is sent to a hosted payment page (usually this is within your website still) but if you use PayPal or a similar gateway, customers may be redirected.
Your server communicates with the payment gateway to securely transmit the information.
All data should be encrypted from the moment the customer enters it.
The payment gateway does a fraud check before forwarding the information to the acquiring bank.
The acquiring bank does another fraud check and sends the information to the issuing bank.
The issuing bank sends the approval or denial to the acquiring bank who then sends it to the payment gateway.
The merchant receives the information and processes the transaction if approved or stops the transaction if it’s declined.
The merchant receives the funds electronically after the payment settles.

The right payment gateway is crucial to your company’s security and profitability. Using a reputable gateway ensures secure transmission of all data and reassures customers that your company takes security seriously.

Give your gateway careful thought. Don’t choose just any company to provide the gateway for you as it literally holds your company’s reputation, profitability, and variability in the palm of their hands. Work with a company that takes PCI compliance, fraud checks, and overall customer and business security seriously for the best results.

What is PCI Compliance and Why is it Important?

If you accept credit cards, you must understand and implement PCI compliance – it is required by all merchant services providers. The good news is that it’s not as hard as you think to comply, and there is plenty of support available to help you.

What is PCI Compliance?

Payment Card Industry Compliance (PCI) is a set of regulations that ensure all businesses are transmitting, processing, and storing payment information in a way that’s safe and secure for consumers. The regulations lower the risk of a data breach, identity theft, and ensure overall safety for both consumers and businesses.

There are 12 total requirements businesses must meet to be ‘compliant.’ Some regulations pertain to the equipment you use – building a secure network and ensuring its ongoing safety as well as practices to determine who has access to the data and how.

PCI compliance also affects financial institutions and payment processors – anyone involved in the payment processing must be compliant to ensure the safety of the transactions.

Why is PCI Compliance Important?

First, PCI compliance isn’t optional – it’s the law. If you don’t follow it, you can’t accept credit cards. Businesses that aren’t compliant are at risk of not only data breaches, but a reputation of not being secure. Word gets around fast when there’s a data breach and it takes a long time to build that reputation and/or level of trust up again.

Today, it’s not only public opinion that gets involved, but the government steps in too. The risk of terrorism is high and the need to know what’s going on in all aspects of data transmission is a key factor.

How to Make Sure your PCI Compliant

You could handle PCI compliance yourself, but it’s time consuming, confusing, and stressful. Instead, it’s best to work with a payment processor who handles it for you. Instead of navigating unchartered waters yourself, you can have support and education to learn what’s involved, what steps you need to take, and even to do most of the heavy work for you.

A part of the compliance does fall on your shoulders though. You must make sure your staff is on board and understands the rules and regulations. You must also take control and know what risks you’re putting your company and your customers’ information under as there’s always a risk anytime information gets transmitted.

When you can promise your customers that you have PCI compliance under control, not only will it help build up your reputation, but it helps increase sales too. Customers are loyal to businesses that do more than provide the goods or services they need. They are loyal to a business that they know will protect their information, watch out for their wellbeing, and provide all-around good customer service.

If you haven’t given PCI compliance a thought lately – it’s time to figure out how to put the proper steps in place. Your business and your customers are relying on you to do so.

What is Tokenization in Payments?

If you accept credit card payments, security should be your utmost concern. Amid the PCI compliance issues, tokenization is one of the primary issues/concerns all businesses should know and understand.

What is Tokenization?

It sounds complicated by tokenization is literally replacing important numbers with ‘tokens’ or a string of numbers/characters for security purposes. The numbers are placeholders for important information, such as the credit card number or account number.

Tokenization is the direct replacement of the sensitive data that if revealed could put a customer’s information at risk. The token can be safely stored and if stolen, hackers wouldn’t’ be able to do anything with it.

How Does it Work?

Tokenization is a part of the payment process. You don’t have to do anything different – a token is assigned when the customer processes his/her payment. If you store the payment information, you’ll never see the customer’s account information. Instead, you’ll see the tokens, which protect the real information.

Here’s how it works:

The customer enters his/her payment data
The system immediately replaces the account data with a string of characters
The tokens are sent for authorization and immediately sent back
You can process the payment with the provided token

Why Tokenization is Important

There’s one reason tokenization is important – fraud. It’s reaching high levels and merchants have to do everything possible to stop it, starting with tokenization.

If you store customer data, you must use tokens to replace their ‘real information.’ While there are many benefits of storing customer’s data, including starting a loyalty program, using a customer’s buying history to advertise, and recommending future products, there’s such a high risk in storing the information that tokenization is crucial.

The good news is if anyone were to get their hands on the tokens, they are virtually useless to them. Sure, the data was hacked, but they can’t connect the tokens with anyone’s information, making it impossible to steal the credit card information.

Tokenization also increases customer loyalty. There’s something reassuring about knowing you can shop at a store and not have to enter your information. Think of Amazon – most people store payment information and even use their one-click purchasing, so all they have to do is click the button and the item is purchased. It’s convenient and smart.

They benefit merchants too because it enhances purchase power, and increases the likelihood of subscription-based purchases.

Bottom Line

If you accept recurring payments, want to store customer’s payment information for convenience and customer loyalty, or you just want to provide a quick way to check out, tokenization is the key to your success.

Work with a payment processor that offers tokenization and makes it easy for the merchant to implement. Running a business is hard enough, but adding the complexities of payment processing on top of it can be a lot for a business owner. Find a payment processor you can trust and that will have your back in all things credit card security.

How Does an EMV Transaction Work?

The latest introduction to credit card safety includes the EMV transaction or Europay, Mastercard, and Visa. EMV represents every chip card in existence today and offers more security than magnetic card transactions.

Chip card technology, as EMV is known, offers a more secure way to process credit card transactions. Most consumers today have converted to this technology, and your business should too.

Here’s how EMV transactions work.

More Security than Magnetic Strip Cards

Here’s the thing. Magnetic strip cards put you at high risk of credit card theft. The data on the card, while ‘hidden’ by the magnetic strip, can be easily replicated. Thieves use skimmers and other ‘not so high tech’ ways to get the information.

EMV cards prevent this from happening. Rather than storing the information on the magnetic strip, they store the information in the chip, which automatically generates a unique code when used. The unique code is only good for that transaction. If a thief were to get his/her hands on the code, it wouldn’t work on any other transactions.

This means thieves can’t create a duplicate card based on the information they steal from an EMV card.

How Payments are Processed

At the checkout, rather than sliding a card through the reader, customers insert the card into the chip reader. Together, the card and the reader communicate to move the process forward.

Customers then either sign for the purchase (chip and sign) or enter their PIN (chip and PIN). It’s not until the transaction is authorized by the customer with either a signature or PIN that the authentication and communication with the acquiring and issuing bank begins.

Do EMV Transactions Completely Prevent Fraud?

Unfortunately, there is no fool-proof way to prevent fraud. While EMV technology has greatly reduced it, there is still the risk, which is why PCI compliance is crucial for all merchants.

The combination of chip technology and PCI compliance can reduce the risk of fraud, though. The lower your fraud incidents, the more your customers will trust you and keep coming back.

Can EMV Transactions Prevent Card not Present Fraud?

Unfortunately, card not present fraud is still a very high risk. EMV cards can’t prevent thieves from grabbing a customer’s information when making a transaction online or over the phone. The risk of card, not present transactions remains high, which is why using a proper payment gateway with PCI compliance is crucial.

Are you Using EMV Technology Yet?

EMV technology is important. Not all businesses have jumped on board, but it’s time. If you want to lower your risk of a data breach and give your customers peace of mind, accepting EMV cards is the key.

While the transition may cost a little money as you update your equipment and learn the new way of doing business, your bottom line will increase with the trust your customers will have in your business. Magnetic stripe credit card transactions are too risky today, making EMV transactions a must-have for every business.

Retail Payments: Consumer Confidence Rises in September Despite Uncertain Outlook

As we work our way through the pandemic, it’s common to look at consumer confidence to see where consumers stand. The good news is that September saw an uptick in all areas of consumer confidence, giving retailers hope as we enter the holiday season and retail payments quickly become a hot topic.

In fact, the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index went up from 86.3 to 101.8 and the Expectations Index, which measures consumers’ forecast on income and labor market conditions went from 86.6 to 104. Consumers are more confident even though no one really knows what may happen.

Why Worry about Consumer Confidence?

As we enter the holiday season, consumer confidence is more important than ever. It’s no secret that the pandemic blew all of us away. Consumers stopped spending because millions of people lost their jobs.

Now, as we work through the pandemic and enter one of the busiest times of the year, retailers want to know what consumers are thinking. Will they spend? Will they be frugal this year? How does all of this affect their retail payments?

With more and more stores closing every day, it’s a scary time for retailers, no doubt, but the rising Consumer Index provides hope.

Consumers are Confident about the Labor Market

Something that plays a big role is the consumers’ confidence in the labor market. If consumers feel good about it, they feel confident there will be plenty of jobs, which means they won’t worry about spending.

If consumers have a bad feeling about the labor market, they may not spend as much because they’ll worry about their job security.

Right now about 33% of consumers feel the labor market will steadily increase between now and March. Since unemployment rates keep falling and more jobs seem to be opening up, consumers may have good reason to feel confident.

What Should Retailers Do?

It’s a scary time for any business, that’s for sure. As we enter the holiday season, you hope for the normal hustle and bustle that the last few months of the year bring in, but not this year. If anything, you went less of the hustle and bustle and more sales are done online.

Will that help or hurt consumer confidence? Only time will tell as we quickly enter the holiday season. As a retailer, you need to keep up your retail payments by opening up a variety of channels to meet consumers’ needs no matter where they are.

Some consumers will go on with business as usual, but most will want omnichannel shopping, the ability to pay how they want, and as little contact as possible. If you want to ride the wave of the consumer confidence index, you too need to think outside the box to make the most of your sales for the rest of 2020, which is hopefully a year we can all say we survived.

B2B Payments: Pandemic Pushes Many Businesses to Automate Accounts Receivables

Chasing money from clients is probably one of the least desirable parts of owning a business. It takes away from many other tasks you could be doing – tasks that may grow your business rather than give you tedious or repetitive tasks to manage, but getting B2B payments is a part of doing business.

The pandemic has caused many companies to cut down on staff, and one of the first areas is always accounts receivable. This makes the average days of sales outstanding continually grow, and further hurts your business. Automating accounts receivable is one of the most important moves you can make.

Why is Automation Necessary

All businesses, no matter the size need automation today. It frees up the skeleton staff, enabling them to work on other tasks that keep the business running.

It’s like a double-edged sword. If you don’t automate AR, you could sit on unpaid bills for many months. Without the funds, you may not be able to continue growing or even operating because you’re low on capital. Without a full staff, though, it may seem impossible. It may have even seemed impossible when you had a full staff.

Automation takes the work out of it. When you automatically send notices, it’s not you or a staff member doing physical labor – no one has to take time out of his/her day to work on the A/R, make phone calls, leave voicemails, and send emails. Everything is done for you.

What Does Automation Look Like?

Accounts receivable automation for B2B payments will look different for every company. In general, though, expect:

Send notices before an invoice is due. Pick a duration, such as 2 weeks before it’s due, and send an automated reminder. The hope is that the reminder before the bill is due is enough for the company to pay the bill on time.
Send automated reminders at specific frequencies once a bill is past due. Whether it’s a few days, once a week, or every other week. Set up automatic reminders until they pay the bill.
Combine an automated process with manual processes, but not inside your company. Have the salespeople jump on board. Let your salespeople know when the bill is late and have them follow up on the notices you send. Sometimes that personal touch is all a company needs to get the bill paid.

Don’t Let Accounts Receivable Fall Behind

Accounts receivable is what makes your company stay in business. Without it, you don’t have money coming in. Because of the pandemic, many companies are purposefully behind or forced to be behind because their own sales are down.

Stay on top of your A/R by automating the processes to avoid losing business. Automating the process takes the labor off your staff and still allows you to be profitable collecting B2B payments. In today’s pandemic, every business owner needs to think outside the box, and accounts receivable is a great place to start. Get your A/R under control and the rest will fall into place.

Retail Trends: What to Expect for the 2020 Holiday Shopping Season

The 2020 holiday shopping season is going to look a lot different this year. As we make our way through the pandemic still, retail trends are quickly changing. It wasn’t only during the stay-at-home orders that retailers had to focus on online orders and curbside pickup – those trends are continuing throughout the holiday season as shoppers favor social distancing over anything else.

Reinventing Black Friday

First, let’s look at Black Friday. The days of fighting over the last toy or the last TV on doorbuster sale are behind us. Now, retail trends are showing that companies are spreading out the Black Friday deals. In other words, you don’t have to flock to the store at 3 AM or miss Thanksgiving dinner to get the best deals anymore.

Many stores, such as Walmart are starting the deals now. They’ve already commented that they’re spreading out the deals both in-store and online to avoid any spread of the disease because people are clamoring for a good deal.

Less Spending

Perhaps one of the most disturbing retail trends for the 2020 holiday season is the lesser spending consumers will do. Surveys already show that consumers don’t have the funds or don’t want to spend the funds this year.

It’s been a scary time for many, so going overboard and putting themselves in credit card debt or sacrificing other expenses just to get through the holidays isn’t a top priority any longer.

Starting Early

Most consumers want to spread the spending out, which many retailers are catching wind of. They want to start shopping now – getting the deals they need now so they can avoid overspending in December. When consumers can spread out their spending, they may be able to buy more because it’s not all done at once.

Shopping Local

Many consumers also show an interest in shopping local. Since the pandemic, millions of small businesses have had to shut down. Concerned consumers want to take any dollars they can spend and give them to the small businesses, making it easier for them to keep their doors open.

You may just see higher sales in local boutiques and retail stores than you will the big-box stores this year, which is great news for small businesses.

Retail Turned Political

Today, consumers are also hyper-aware of how a company operates. They know their values and choose where they spend their money accordingly. With social media use on the rise, businesses are always showing their cards – consumers want to know where they stand, how they treat their employees, how they treat the environment, and what rights they stand for.

It’s easy to say that retail merchant trends have changed dramatically for 2020. Whether it’s for the better or worse is yet to be determined. What we should know, though, is that consumers want to start shopping and finding deals now to avoid the crazy December rush. Is your business ready?

Amazon Unveils New Technology Allowing Consumers to Pay with their Palms

Now you can turn your hand into a credit card, literally with Amazon Payments.

Amazon One allows consumers to pay with their palms, but only at select Amazon Go stores in Seattle for the time being. But they do plan to expand its use in other Amazon stores soon.

Beyond its own retail stores, Amazon plans to expand the palm payments in many other areas including other retailers, office buildings (such as medical facilities), and sports stadiums.

Why Palm Recognition?

Many people wonder, why would Amazon choose palm recognition for its new Amazon Payments rather than facial recognition, which is already widely used?

There’s one reason – privacy. Palms aren’t as readily accessible so it gives a sense of security. You can’t tell who a person is when you look at their palm, but you can tell who someone is by looking at their face. Using the palm is also intentional. Someone could accidentally (or forcefully) give their facial recognition and the payment would be used. With palm recognition, it’s more of an intentional use, which means better security.

How it Works

Amazon has scanning hardware that scans the palm and stores the information. The system encrypts the information and stores it for use. You don’t have to have an Amazon account either, but this will only come in handy once it’s available in other stores and businesses other than Amazon.

Now data is stored at the store level. Everything is encrypted and stored online. It’s mean to make the shopping experience fast and efficient.

For the time being, users may only link one credit card. You may link it to either palm or even choose to do both. In the future, Amazon hopes to expand to offer the use of multiple credit cards (one for each palm).

Right now, users scan their palm upon entering an Amazon store. Anything you take in the store is then charged to your credit card that you scanned when you entered the store. As it expands, you may be able to use the same palm (credit card) at multiple stores.

Is Amazon Payments Worth It?

Only time will tell if Amazon payments is worth it. They are slowly rolling it out to determine its effectiveness and safety. Keeping it within the walls of Amazon stores itself gives Amazon more control as they work out the kinks.

The goal is to eventually have Amazon Payments available in many more areas. The targeted areas once they go outside of Seattle, Washington are Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. You’ll likely see it at large retailers or stadiums first as the popularity grows and everyone ensures that it’s as safe as Amazon says.

5 Tips for Merchant Services Agents

Selling anything to anyone has the potential of being a stressful situation, especially when you’re talking merchant services. Overall, salespeople are placed under specific stereotypes by default. Then things seem to get impossible when you’re trying to explain why this merchant account is better than the one they have.

The stereotypes of sales people are so hardwired into the consumers’ subconscious, that as soon as you knock on the door of a residence or walk through the door of a business, their defenses are activated, and their mind is made up: I don’t want what you’re selling.

Nevertheless, it goes without saying that there are those select few agents make the art of selling look so easy. While you’re struggling to maintain a cordial conversation with a potential client, you know of other salespeople within your circle who are on a first name basis with their clients. Furthermore, they’re another ISO outselling you in the same payment processing industry, selling the same products.

What angle do they take? Should you take a direct value angle? “Our credit card processing will save you money, we offer affordable point of sale systems, we don’t have a term agreement or cancellation fee?” Or do you go for the quality value when selling merchant services? “When you call you will never be placed on hold or talk to a robot, you’ll get white glove service, our customer satisfaction is through the roof!”

If you’re asking these questions, then you’re looking at the situation wrong. Most of the battle is being good at sales without seeming like a salesperson. The key is changing you’re attitude and composure, along with building report with the potential customer.

Here are five tips for you merchant service agents out there looking to widen the gap between those hard to open doors, while bridging the gap between tough customers and yourself.

1. Change Your Mindset About Selling

If you want people to view you as a human being with socially responsible values and not like an insect that just crawled into their establishment, you have to change your own mindset about selling merchant accounts.

The thing is, people are very observant – more observant than you think. From the moment they set eyes on you, they’re reading you.

Believe it or not, we can change how people read us by changing how we view ourselves and what we’re doing. Think of clients as a partner rather than a target.

Clif Reichard wrote in the Harvard Business Review: “Many sales organizations do little to create an emotional connection with prospective customers and concentrate instead on hype-filled sales pitches.” This is probably the most important sales tip, not only for payment processing but for sales in general.

2. Slow Things Down a Bit

No matter what social encounter you find yourself in, there are these sets of guidelines we must follow in order to get along with people. One of the fundamental rules of engagement that seems to repeat itself in almost every social situation is taking things slow.

A good example would be going on a first, second, or even third date with someone. No one in their right mind is going to meet someone on the first few dates, sit an engagement ring on the table, and begin listing all the reasons why you’re prime spouse material. You can be sure that you’ll get pretty much the same response a lot of salespeople receive as soon as they jump into their robotic sales pitch.

3. Know Your Product as If You’re the One Who Made It

Memorizing some lines or being able to list a bunch of technical mumbo-jumbo that even you don’t fully grasp makes it pretty obvious to your prospective buyer that you wouldn’t buy what your selling.

When someone like Elon Musk gets on stage to sell his innovative products, he does so with pure conviction. Musk convinces people around the world that he created these products because the future of the world as we know it depends on them.

Rarely do you hear Musk getting all techie with his audience because he likely knows most of the people either don’t care about the tech stuff or wouldn’t understand it to begin with. He focuses on the problems the average person is concerned with and offers solutions.

4. Build Long-Lasting Relationships

Just because you finally sold some guy or gal a point of sale (POS) system doesn’t mean the sale is over – it’s far from over. More than likely, he or she belongs to a community of business owners they can refer your merchant services to in the future. But the only way that will happen is if you maintain an open dialogue with them. Make them feel like you’re their partner.

5. Stop Selling and Start Interacting

When you’re trying to sell someone something, in essence, you’re attempting to convince them they need what you’re offering. Why is your credit card processing technology better than what they have now? Is that route relevant to them?

On the other hand, when you interact with consumers, you’re teaching them how your credit card processing system was designed just for them. Not only that, but it was designed to solve their specific problem(s) or enhance their business. By taking time to teach them how working with an independent sales organization (ISO) benefits them, this will perk their interest.

Believe it or not, these five tips are straightforward to learn. It takes time to get them down and to develop your style. Selling is like anything else you have to take time to learn. The difference is, when you’re dealing with rejection and concerned with targets – not to mention personal financial responsibilities – it can seem like a long journey.

Nevertheless, if you want to succeed in the long term, you have to buckle down and apply these five tips and give them all you got. Every failure is only a lesson learned, and every lesson learned gets you closer to being a pro.