Merchant Services and How it Affects Trading



A marketplace thrives on good customer services and this should be a major concern when looking to provide different features at a small business. Of course there are the obvious amenities you should offer your customers such as wheelchair access, free parking, special discounts and loyalty card gifts but I wanted to discuss one aspect which is a priority for consumers and often goes unnoticed.

Merchant Services is actually a term which is specific to finances and is little known to traders competing for a specific marketplace consumer base. Whatever your niche, you can guarantee that people will want to pay with ease and be sure that their details are in safe hands, the easier it is for a person to settle their bills the more likely that they are going to enjoy their overall experience with you.

As a trades-person you may be wondering how you can receive payments from your customers with the latest technology and whether it is in fact right for your specific niche. You will first have to talk to an acquiring bank about setting up a merchant account, this can be a tricky process if you are starting up a new venture, although there are 3rd party providers who have experience in this field.

After you have established where the funds for your business are going to be deposited, you can choose how you are going to charge you customers, this can be using a wireless PDQ machine if you expect to take payment at various locations or it can be via a static PDQ terminal if you have a premises.

To fully address the title of this post I want to emphasize that Merchant Services is a new industry which can excel any venture to be associated with reliable and innovative features. For example, your customers will return to you again and again if they recognize your processing is secure and you are up to date with the latest systems.

New advances are being made in the way that we transfer funds, corporations such as First Data have teamed up with Google Wallet to allow us more security when purchasing via online payment systems.

Massive changes are on the horizon in the form of NFC mobile payment where a person simply swipes their phone against a terminal in order to settle a bill. However, it is important to see how these features are being implemented since vulnerabilities are often unveiled like in case of ‘Twitter’ Jack Dorsey’s Square App, which is no longer associated as a PCI compliant payment method.