Accept Payments Your Way
September 16th, 2016 by Elma Jane

National Transaction offer valuable features and benefits, if you want to improve your business’s productivity, you should look for the following features below, that you need from your Electronic Payments provider.

Advanced Security Options – 6 out of 10 small businesses close within six months of a card data breach, it is important that Point-of-Sale devices should have appropriate security measures, particularly EMV, encryption and tokenization. NTC offer Safe-T for Small and Medium Businesses and Safe-T for Large Businesses. The Top-tier security is important on your business’s data especially customer information, consider adding additional authentication procedures.

Fast Payment Processing – first step is having up-to-date technology, because some customers might leave, the sooner you have the money processed by your provider, the bigger and stronger your business can become. NTC is adept at administering payments quickly and efficiently. We can provide regular funding or next day funding.

Feature Flexibility –  obtaining the features you need from your payment services provider is very important. Look for a provider that appropriately addresses your payment concerns.

Mobile Payment Processing – NTC offer Virtual Merchant/Converge Mobile that gives you the ability to accept payments using your smartphone or tablet anywhere you go. Furthermore, the app works with most Apple and Android mobile devices. Accept a key-entered transactions or swipe cards using an encryption reader. You can now take chip card payments using Ingenico iCMP PIN Pad or the new RP457c card reader.

Reliable Customer Support – NTC is available 24/7, the phones are answered by humans and not automated systems. You got support with your hardware, answer questions and guide you to better understand the process. Customer support is the most important feature of any business partnership you make.  At NTC we are very passionate about that.

Up-to-Date Tech – futuristic features, like mobile payment abilities, EMV/NFC, contactless payments are worth investing. Modern consumers are generally more familiar with up-to-date payment systems. Seeing a payment service provider offer a swipe-only terminal should be a red flag, because the recent regulations require merchants to have EMV to provide better data security.

 

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit Card Security, Electronic Payments, EMV EuroPay MasterCard Visa, Mobile Payments, Mobile Point of Sale, Near Field Communication, Point of Sale, Smartphone Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 22nd, 2015 by Elma Jane

Virtual Merchant/Virtual Merchant Mobile now called Converge, is a popular product offering solutions for retail stores, Non Face to Face businesses along with E-commerce/Internet sites. Converege can be access anywhere with internet. Users can download the application on their smartphone or tablet. Converge also gives users the convenience of sending an invoice to customers electronically with NTC e-Pay!

Converge ePay

For Retail store National Transaction offers the latest in EMV and NFC technologies. NTC customers can accept contactless payment with the same NFC technology used by Apple Pay, Google Wallet and SoftCard. NTC offers different solutions that cater to your business needs. For those already using a POS system, NTC integrates with most systems. NTC has you covered.

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Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, e-commerce & m-commerce, Electronic Payments, Mobile Payments, Mobile Point of Sale Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,

July 23rd, 2015 by Elma Jane

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The digital payments landscape is changing at a rapid pace. Consumers are finally adopting digital wallets, like Apple Pay and Android Pay.

The deadline for merchants to become EMV compliant, the global standard that covers the processing of credit and debit card payments using a card that contains a microprocessor chip, is quickly approaching.

Today’s consumers show an increasing desire to use new payment methods because they’re convenient. However, this presents a challenge to merchants, as many have not made the switch to the modern technology required to accept these methods since they’re generally hard-wired to resist technology changes.

Merchants must evolve with technology or they’ll find themselves unable to compete and in danger of losing customers.

Looking long term, the benefits of adopting new payment technology will outweigh the cost of transitioning. The fact is that new payment technology will reduce fraud risk due to counterfeit cards, provide greater insight into shoppers with sophisticated data and will ultimately lower costs for merchants over time.

The value merchants will get out of new payment methods: 

Security

Investing in new payment technology will help reduce the risk of fraud. EMV, as an example. Beginning in October 2015, merchants and the financial institutions that have made investments in EMV will be protected from financial fraud liability for card-present fraud losses for both counterfeit, lost, stolen and non-receipt fraud.

EMV is already a standard in Europe, where fraud is on the decline. In turn, American credit card issuers are being pressured to replace easily hacked magnetic strips on cards with more secure “chip-and-PIN” technology. Europe has been using Chip, and Chip & Pin for years.

There’s nothing that can guarantee 100 percent security, but when EMV is coupled with other payment innovations, like tokenization that separate the customer’s identity from the payment, much of the cost and risk of identity theft is eliminated. If hackers get access to the token, all they get is information from one transaction. They don’t have access to credit card numbers or banking accounts, so the damage that can be done is minimal.

As card fraud rises, there’s a strong case to upgrade to a payment system that works with a smartphone or tablet and accepts both EMV chip cards and tokens.

Insight into Customer Behavior

In addition to added security, upgrading to new payment technology opens up a door to greater customer insights, improved consumer engagement and enables merchants to grow revenue by providing customers with receipts, rewards, points and coupons. By collecting marketing data at the point of sale a business can save on that data that they only dreamed of buying.

Investment Outweighs the Cost

New technology does have upfront costs, but merchants need to think about it as an investment that will grow top-line revenue. Beware of providers offering free hardware. Business can benefit by doing some research on the actual cost of the hardware.

By increasing security, merchants are further enabling mobile and emerging technologies, which will make shopping easier.

Customers will also be more confident in using their cards.

As an added bonus to merchants, most EMV-enabled POS equipment will include contactless technology, allowing merchants to accept contactless and mobile payments. This will result in a quicker check-out experience so merchants can handle more transactions.

Faster customer checkout.                                               

The best system for is the one that makes the merchant as efficient and profitable as possible, as well as improves the customer checkout experience.

Retail climate is competitive, merchants have two choices:

Do nothing or embrace the fact that payments are changing. Transitions from old systems to new ones require work and risk, but merchants who use modern technology are investing in the future and will certainly outperform those who choose to do nothing.

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, EMV EuroPay MasterCard Visa, Mobile Payments, Near Field Communication, Point of Sale Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 1st, 2014 by Elma Jane

Few Americans will likely remember the life and work of Martin Cooper, largely because most Americans have no idea who Martin Cooper is. Without Martin Cooper much of what we identify as normal life for the last two decades would not have been possible, as without his invention we would still be looking for pay phones, dropping off film to be developed, printing out boarding passes and contemplating a future where a plastic rectangle was the height of payments technology.

Anyone reading this has a phone with internet access which means no one has to guess, with a few taps on a smartphone most readers who didn’t already know were able to find out that Martin Cooper invented the handheld mobile phone and by so doing changed the lives of not just Americans, but people all over the world.

Mobile has integrated so seamlessly into our life that we didn’t realize it was changing everything we do.

Here are the list of all of the ways that mobile has improved life for us all.

We All Get To Know Everything All The Time, with just a smartphone.                                                       Impulse buy is a thing of the past because consumers just don’t buy on impulse as much anymore.                 A new intentionality has taken hold of shopping. Many Americans have the money and the will to spend. But they are time-pressed and deal savvy, visiting stores only when they run out of items like cereal or toilet paper and after doing extensive research on purchases online and with friends. They buy what they came for and then leave. Plus consumers are harder to fool, they know if they are being overcharged because they can look it up in real time while they are in the showroom.

Full Price Is A Notion Utterly Without Meaning.                                                                                             There are sites like Groupon, LivingSocial and a thousand imitators offer coupons pretty much across every retailer that mean no matter where one is shopping or eating they’re probably a few button taps away from paying less for the type of service they are out for.  And then there are the retailer rewards programs all bent on giving consumers more stuff for free as long as they use their mobile coupons.

We All Think Way More About Privacy And Digital Security Than We Used To.                                         Twenty years ago one’s largest security concern was probably that their home or car would be broken into, followed closely by their wallet being stolen.  Now we wait for Russian cybercriminals to steal our cards by hacking into POS systems and lifting the data. Or for cybercriminals to hack our phones and upload naked pictures of us to the internet (celebrity readers only). Or for Nigerian princes to trick our grandparents into wiring them money.  In short, while we still fear for our physical possessions as much as we ever did, the mobile world gave us something entirely new to worry about, the integrity of our data and who could use our phones, cards and email accounts as a backdoor into our entire personal and financial lives. 

We Want It All, And We Want It Now.                                                                                                    Anyone with a phone in their pocket can, in one way or another, buy it on the spot.  Which has given rise to the push for same-day delivery, consumers who can buy it now, also want to be able to get it now, or as close to now as possible.

We Also Want It Later.                                                                                                                             Maybe the consumer likes going to the store, enjoys the Christmas lights, wants to eat at a mall food court, they just don’t want to stand inline. And now, through the magic of omnichannel commerce, they may not have to do. Through the magic of multi-device shopping an instore pick-up, consumers are increasingly getting used to finding something on their mobile, paying on their computer and picking up in store. Or some combination thereof.

Mobile has made commerce less a race between the e-markets and the brick-and-mortars, and more a race to offer the most seamless commerce experience. Mobile has taught ever one to care less about where they buy, and more about what the total buying experience is.

We Pay For Access Instead Of Objects.                                                                                                         Ten years ago when your family set about its early experiments in binge watching television with the first season of Lost, odds are everyone gathered round and watched a DVD set or maybe a Blue Ray, if your family happened to be full of early adopters.

This weekend, when entire families are sitting down to watch How To Get Away With Murder, more likely than not they are streaming it through Hulu. Unless they don’t want to watch that, in which case, they are watching something else on  Netflix on their phone while sitting in the same room with their family. Unless of course this is a football family, in which case you are paying the NFL for access to every football game played everywhere in America tomorrow and a cable company to watch in HD.

We Want To Use A Phone To Access Everything.                                                                                      It’s almost now quaint to refer to a time when phones were used primarily to talk.  With the rapidly emerging internet of things, it will soon be quaint to talk about a phone as a tool used primarily for communicating and shopping.

The smartphone is already heading toward being the key interface between connected devices and products (The Internet of Things) and their users. Among other things, people will use the device to remotely control household appliances, interact with screens and automatically adjust car settings to their preferences.

We Kinda Hope The Phone Might Keep Us Alive.                                                                                    With the release of Apple Pay, also came the release of Apple Health that has widely been reported as ushering in the age of mobile device as wellness guru. Smartphones can already help people lead healthier lives by providing information, recommendations and reminders based on data gathered through sensors embedded in users’ clothing (shoes, wristbands, etc.) or through other phone capabilities (motion detectors, cameras, etc.).

And, even if you don’t listen to your phone and put your health at risk, it will still probably save you.  Internet-enabled mobile devices are becoming important tools in broadening access to health care, diagnosing diseases and saving lives in crisis situations.

Making Life A Lot Better For Everyone.                                                                                                          Small merchants can do something now that they couldn’t do en masse twenty years ago. Take credit card payments and use a tablet to do that and run their business. With the emergence of mobile, came thousands of the other mPOS solutions and platforms exploding all over the world. This has not only changed the way these small businesses operate, it has changed their entire pitch to their customers.

Mobile has made life easier for many consumers, but for some businesses and many people mobile has made mainstream financial participation possible.

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Smartphone Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

July 22nd, 2014 by Elma Jane

An Android tablet is a great tool for work, but not every Android app was made for tablets. In fact, most Android apps were made for smaller smartphone displays. While those apps will run just fine on your tablet, they don’t do anything to take advantage of the extra screen space, and while smartphone apps are forced to hide options deep in menus, tablet apps have more room to put those controls front and center. Plus, phone apps just don’t look very good on a tablet. The interface is usually stretched and skewed to fill the larger screen. With that in mind, here are apps that will help you get to work on your Android tablet.

Android Device Manager (Free) – a good tool to help you find a lost or stolen Android device. Keeping it installed on your Android tablet will enable you to quickly locate your business phone if it’s ever misplaced. The app can force your phone to ring even if it’s in silent mode. Lock it to prevent thieves from accessing private or confidential business data and even locate your phone using its built-in GPS sensor. Using Android Device Manager on a tablet gives you plenty of space to view and pan around the map while you’re pinpointing the location of your phone. As a last resort, you can use the app to remotely wipe all the data from your smartphone.

Evernote (Free) – is a great app for taking notes, making to-do lists and saving photos and it’s even better on a tablet. The biggest difference between the smartphone and tablet version of Evernote is that the latter features a persistent sidebar that lets you quickly flip between notes, notebooks and tagged items. It has large buttons that let you create a new note, snap a photo or quickly dictate a voice memo. Those options are hidden in a slide-out menu in the smartphone app. You also get more space to view each individual note, which means you can see your entire memo or list at once with less scrolling and swiping.

Google Docs (Free) – Let’s face it: a word processor like Google Docs isn’t all that useful on your smartphone. Sure, it can come in handy when you need to make a few tweaks to an existing document, but you’ll need a bigger display to get much work done. The Google Docs app was really made for tablets, especially when you pair your slate with a Bluetooth keyboard to use it like a laptop computer. Not only do you get a better view of your entire document on the tablet, but you also get quick access to formatting options at the top of the interface, letting you change fonts, colors, text alignment and more. Those options are tucked away in several layers of menus in the smartphone app. Google’s Sheet spreadsheet editor and Slides presentation maker are also better suited for a large tablet display than a smartphone.

Google Drive (Free) – is a solid cloud storage platform for Android users, and a large tablet screen makes it easier to navigate your file library, thanks to a persistent sidebar that lets you jump to any folder with one tap. It also helps you search through shared and starred documents, or jump to a view of your recently uploaded files. But the best reason to use Google Drive on your tablet is that it lets you open those documents on the tablet version of Google Docs, which is much more functional on a large screen than on a smartphone.

Google Keep (Free) – is a minimalist productivity app that lets you quickly capture notes, voice memos and photos, then view all items in a colorful pinboard-style layout. It works fine on smartphones, but on tablets the app scales beautifully to fill the entire screen, letting you view more notes and photos at once. Otherwise, the app offers identical functionality on smartphones and tablets. In addition to pinning new notes to your board, you can create a to-do list and check items off with one tap. You can also set reminders for any item on your tablet and receive an alert on your smartphone when the time comes.

Hangouts (Free) – is an all-in-one messaging app that combines text messaging and videoconferencing functionality. The app imports your contacts from your Google account to let you create new conversations quickly and the ability to add and remove participants in the middle of a conversation helps it stand out from other messaging apps. You can start a video chat session at any time by tapping the video call button during a Hangouts session. That comes in handy when you need to meet with an employee, colleague or client, but can’t meet face-to-face. Hangouts works fine on a smartphone, but it’s better on a tablet. A persistent sidebar makes it easier to browse through your past conversations, and a larger touch-screen keyboard makes it easier to type out messages.

Informant 3 ($9.99) – is a powerful productivity app that combines a business calendar and task manager in a single location. The calendar automatically imports all your events and appointments from the stock Android calendar, so getting started with Informant 3 is easy. Once it’s set up, you can view your agenda at a glance. Change the view to get the optimal view of your day, week or month and add, move and delete items with a few taps. Meanwhile, the task manager lets you add items to a dynamic to-do list, set reminders and alerts, sort tasks by importance and more. Informant 3 works best on a tablet. Browsing your calendars and lists is easier and more comfortable on a larger display. The app also features a special tablet mode with a sidebar that lets you quickly jump between calendar dates.

Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

July 15th, 2014 by Elma Jane

Businesses only stand to benefit by making themselves accessible via mobile devices. With a mobile website or mobile app, businesses can boost sales, retain loyal customers and expand their reach. The question is, which type of mobile presence is best for your business Or should you have both? Both mobile websites and mobile apps let customers find and access your business from devices they use the most, but a mobile website and mobile app are not the same thing. To help you decide, check out the differences between the two and how they can benefit your business.

Mobile App – is a smartphone or tablet application. Unlike a mobile website, a mobile app must be downloaded and installed, typically from an app marketplace, such as the Apple App Store or Android’s Google Play store.

Mobile Website – is designed specifically for the smaller screens and touch-screen capabilities of smartphones and tablets. It can be accessed using any mobile devices Web browser, like Safari on iOS and Chrome on Android. Users simply type in the URL or click on a link to your website, and the website automatically detects the mobile device and redirects the viewer to the mobile version of your website.

Mobile website’s benefits

The primary benefit of a mobile website is that it makes regular websites more accessible for mobile users. It can have all the same elements as the regular version of the website, such as its look and feel, pages, images and other content, but it features a mobile-friendly layout that offers improved readability and functionality when viewed on a smartphone or tablet. By having a mobile website, customers can access your website anytime, anywhere using any device, without compromising the user experience.

Mobile app’s benefits

Although a mobile app functions a lot like a mobile website, a mobile app gives businesses the advantage of having their own corner on a customer’s device, because users have to download and install the app, businesses have more control over their presence on a device than they would with a mobile website. For instance, a mobile app can be closed or inactive, but still work in the background to send geo-targeted push notifications and gather data about customer’s preferences and behaviors. Moreover, mobile apps make it easy to deploy loyalty programs and use mobile payments using a single platform. It’s also much easier to access a mobile app than a mobile website all it takes is one tap, versus having to open a Web browser then type in a URL.

Mobile website and Mobile app features

Although mobile websites and mobile apps aren’t the same thing, they generally offer the same features that can help grow your business by making it easier for customers to find and reach you.

Features include the following:

Click-to-map: Users can use their devices’ GPS to locate your business and instantly get directions, without having to manually input your address.

Mobile commerce: Take your online store mobile with e-commerce-capable mobile websites and apps, such as with Buy Now buttons and mobile carts.

One-click calling: Users can call your business simply by tapping on your phone number from your website or app.

Social sharing: This feature integrates social media apps and websites to enable users to easily share content with friends and followers.

Mobile marketing: This lets users sign up for marketing lists and loyalty programs while enabling businesses to easily launch location-based text-message marketing and email marketing campaigns.

How to build a mobile app

Just like the options available for building a mobile website, businesses can either hire an app developer to build a mobile app or take the budget-friendly DIY mobile app maker route.

How to build a mobile website

To build a mobile website, one option is to hire a mobile Web developer to create one from scratch or convert an existing website into a mobile-friendly one. A more affordable option is to build one yourself with a free DIY mobile website builder, which uses a drag-and-drop platform that doesn’t require programming or Web design skills.

Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

June 17th, 2014 by Elma Jane

BioCatch, an Israeli startup that uses behavioural biometrics to authenticate visitors to banking and e-commerce sites, has raised $10 million in a funding round. BioCatch aims to eliminate passwords and authentication dongles for online banking and shopping, replacing them with a system that recognizes users by how they physically use their computer or tablet. The firm’s technology collects and analyses over 400 bio-behavioral, cognitive and physiological parameters based on how people type and move a cursor around to create unique profiles for visitors to sites.

In addition, the system creates invisible challenges for visitors to sites. For example, when a user moves the cursor towards a button, they are deliberately knocked slightly off course and subconsciously have to correct in what the company says is a way unique to them. This, argues BioCatch, is more secure than traditional authentication methods, demonstrating an 80% reduction in false positives for detecting the same amount of fraud. It also significantly reduces friction for the customer because the system automatically kicks in when they visit a site using the technology. BioCatch says that it has signed up several unnamed banks and e-commerce sites, and that it will use the new funding to push on in North American and Europe as well as to expand R&D efforts. Funding will also allow to continue strengthening BioCatch offering and expand global reach in strategic markets, while keeping the world’s largest and most influential institutions safe and secure.

 

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, e-commerce & m-commerce Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,

June 12th, 2014 by Elma Jane

QR:  The Bridge to the Modern World

Involvement devices have come a long way from the time of Clearinghouse mailings, where you would peel off a label and stick it onto another page before dropping it back in the mail.

Today, print’s best involvement device is the QR code. It works as a portal or bridge into the mobile online world where the cataloger’s brand lives and breathes in real time. Even better, it can lead the customer from the catalog page to the checkout button on their smartphone within minutes.

The printed catalog delivers rich colors and a personal, tactile experience still not attainable through any mobile device. In many ways, though, it is a vestige of a bygone era, and an expensive one at that. Catalogers know this. Even the U.S. Postal Service also knows this. That’s why the USPS is running a postage discount promotion for the second year in a row this summer to encourage the use of QR codes by direct mailers.

Let’s take a quick look at the way a few catalogers are using QR codes.

Anthropologie

Anthropologie’s marketing strategy is more about selling a lifestyle than selling products. That explains why making it easy for customers to move toward actually buying something doesn’t seem like such a big priority in their catalog. They did not include a QR code anywhere. The closest they came was one line next to the address: For store information, go to www.anthropologie.com. Their 800 number, they do take phone orders is printed only once in tiny type, so having no QR code seems to fit in with their attempts to play hard to get. Marketing critique aside, by not using a QR code on their catalog, they are missing the opportunity to draw customers into closer involvement with their brand, whether or not they intend to make an immediate sale.

Best Practices

With these few examples in mind, it’s time to look at best practices for using QR codes in catalogs, which can be a two-sided equation. There is the technical aspect and the branding/selling aspect. As far as the technical side goes, customers need to use their smartphone to scan the code successfully, and the destination on the other end must be optimized for mobile access. Sometimes the hardest part is organizing the resources required to execute the backend side of things, especially if the goal is to make an immediate sale.

The main thing to consider is that QR codes work as a bridge and that bridge is a smartphone, iPad, or some other tablet with all their usual constraints (screen size, internet connection, quality of camera, QR reader app, user proficiency, etc.). Also, don’t assume that everyone has a QR reader or even knows what a QR code is. Especially in catalogs, where customers have been seeing postal service barcodes for years, people may assume that the pixelated square thing is just something else for the USPS to lose money on. Instead, including a brief call to action to scan the QR code should do the trick.

Crossing the Bridge

Getting customers to scan the QR code is only half the battle. Now you need to make sure they feel it was worth their while to scan. It’s all about the next steps in your customer relationship. If you have an Apple or Android app, then that’s where to send people if you know that you can convert sales successfully on mobile devices. Sending them to your Facebook fan page is an option too, but not a big win if a majority of your customers are already fans.

Special promotions, optimized for mobile access, will certainly earn your QR its keep. If your goal is to inspire a trip to one of your stores, then do what Brookstone does and send customers to a Google map with all store locations within a hundred miles. It’s also possible to send scanners to a dedicated page, again, optimized for mobile where you give them a number of options: Facebook, shop, app, etc.

Delia’s

By appealing to fashion-hungry American teens via retail stores, web, and catalog, Delia’s sold over $220 million in 2011. In the single catalog we looked at, Delia’s had a QR code on its back cover. When scanned, the code points to Delia’s Facebook page. That’s certainly one way to build involvement with the Delia’s brand, but it may not be the best. Delia’s has an Apple app with full e-commerce capabilities, so Delia’s could be missing out on the opportunity to help the customer cut to the chase and get straight to their virtual shopping bag. Still, at least they’re using the code. 

King Schools

Unless you’re a pilot in training or know one fairly well, you have probably never heard of King Schools. They offer more than 90 flight training courses, plus all sorts of accessories for pilots-in-training. They have no retail stores, but that’s all the more reason to mention them here, retailers can learn a lot from King Schools about how to use QR codes in their catalogs.

In the one catalog, King used a QR code on the front cover and the back cover. Now, the iPad shows enormous potential for use in general and commercial aviation, so King is smart to use their QR codes to point customers directly toward their mobile apps and offerings. In fact, King Schools uses QR codes on the Take Courses on Your iPad landing page itself.

In most cases it seems counterintuitive to display a QR code on a website for people to scan. After all, they’re already there. It’s a smart use of codes in this case, for two reasons. First, the codes lead the customer directly to the Apple app store, so it actually makes sense to scan the codes even though the customer is already on their website. The customer is now just a few clicks away from buying and installing the app. Second, there is one QR code for their app store in general, and then there are unique codes for individual apps.

Technicalities

The content in a QR code tops out at 4,296 alphanumeric characters, but catalogers only need a fraction of that to get the customer to where they want them. However, even when the character count is down to a few dozen, size does matter, because QR codes with more data embedded in them are more complex visually. This means that even smartphones with the latest and greatest optics will have trouble reading densely populated codes. Make sure the QR code is big enough. Even the simplest codes will frustrate the scanning process if they are too small or if there isn’t enough white space around them. Maybe a QR code isn’t the most photogenic thing in the world, so it’s a good challenge for catalog art directors to incorporate it into the design without shrinking it into oblivion.

More sophisticated catalogers will want to use personalized QR codes. Today, even local printers are likely to have the means to print unique QR codes for each recipient in a mailing. This creates the ability to track scans back to the individual, a marketer’s dream when it comes to one-to-one marketing relationships.

Innovation can get you traction within the social media realm and that’s money in the bank. Whether you’re a major catalog player or using QR for something completely different, always consider getting the marketing and PR people involved to leverage any novelty aspects of the application.

The benefits pile up quickly to those catalogers who take the time to get smart about QR codes. Thick catalog books can be thinned down a bit if QR codes succeed in pulling customers from the page and onto their site or apps, cutting postal costs for the millions of mailings every year. And, even if the cataloger doesn’t go to the extreme of printing unique QR codes, the branding value of offering that connection from the old-style printed piece to the dynamic world of interactive mobile technology makes it well worth the effort.

The ink needed to print a QR code on a major retailer’s catalog might weigh only a fraction of an ounce, but when used right, it’s worth its weight in gold. Too bad the majority of catalogs seem to be squandering the opportunity by underutilizing the code or worse, not including any at all. In a world where an integrated multi-channel approach is a must-have for any retailer to survive, the stakes of leveraging every opportunity for interaction are higher than ever.

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Smartphone Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

May 23rd, 2014 by Elma Jane

Before making a purchase, there are several devices that consumers may use to help them make a decision: Use a specific store’s mobile app on their smartphones. Visit the store’s website on a tablet or computer, or just pick up the phone and call customer service to ask a question. Whatever the case, omnichannel is an important buzzword for merchants.

Here are ways to ensure a seamless and secure retail experience to turn browsers into loyal buyers.

Ensure Channels Work Together

Even in historically single-channel retail sectors such as grocery, more than half of customers now use two or more channels before completing a purchase, shown in a recent study. Retailers must therefore offer both traditional and digital channels. However, before investing in the latest mobile-optimized website feature or app, retailers should learn how existing online and physical channels can together enhance the customer experience. What customers value most is not the number of channels offered, but how these channels support each other.

A merchant’s website might encourage visitors to take advantage of a special event in-store, while sales assistants on the floor can use Wi-Fi enabled tablets to access additional product information.

Help Customers Find What They Want

With Internet access ubiquitous, cost-conscious customers are just a click away from being able to compare prices and find special offers. Many take out their smartphone or tablet in stores to compare prices, a trend called Showrooming.

Online retailers can take advantage of this trend by encouraging shoppers to compare prices in-store using a mobile app. In-store retailers, on the other hand, could provide greater value through targeted offers, price match guarantees, expert advice, convenient delivery choices and personalized customer care.

Optimize The Checkout Experience

Businesses must be sure to have a quick, streamlined checkout process once they have converted an online browser into a customer or else they risk facing shopping cart abandonment. This can be done in a few steps:

1. Assess how the checkout experience can be customized for its customers. Keep the mandatory information required from new or first-time online or mobile shoppers to a minimum and shorten the process for returning customers by securely storing their payment details and other personal information.

2. Develop a dedicated mobile app or other innovative functions that can increase long-term satisfaction and loyalty.

3. Test different payment methods to find those that are most convenient for customers. These payment options may include paying with reward points, using a digital wallet or providing a digital offer or coupon at checkout. There is a balance to be found between having additional payment methods to meet customer expectations and choosing methods appropriate to a merchant’s business model.

4. Establish a one-click online checkout process. Chase for example, is currently developing a Chase Wallet and Quick Checkout solution. The Chase Wallet will allow customers to store and access their Chase cards and ultimately, any branded card for a quick checkout. It will also update Chase-branded cards when a customer replaces an existing card and use tokenization to securely process payments with select merchants.

Merchants also face the challenge of ensuring that the online and in-store checkout experience is secure, while at the same time eliminating as many false positives as possible. False positives are a hindrance to any business as they may reduce sales, increase chargebacks and frustrate customers. A quick-checkout solution may help reduce false positives because customer information is automatically populated rather than manually keyed into the checkout page.

Acquirers should also work with online retailers to provide a conditional approval code for a transaction. This code allows the fulfillment process to move forward while authentication is taking place. The additional time for a thorough authentication also helps reduce the number of false positives.

Use Data to Build Loyalty

Customers will likely return to a retailer if product marketing reflects their past purchases or interests. Therefore, taking advantage of data including a customer’s purchasing history, loyalty, behavior or social media interests may help retailers to better understand their customers as well as personalize their shopping experience.

According to a study released in March 2013, Chase Paymentech found that 32 percent of merchants use their payment data to help craft their multi-channel sales strategy and 42 percent use it to improve the online customer experience. In addition, further analysis of payment methods, chargeback rates, fraud rates and authorization rates may improve the customer shopping experience and  drive overall profitability.

 

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May 21st, 2014 by Elma Jane

Mobile credit card processing is way cheaper than traditional point-of-sale (POS) systems. Accepting credit cards using mobile devices is stressful, not to mention a hassle to set up  and customers would never dare compromise security by saving or swiping their credit cards on a mobile device. Some of the many myths surrounding mobile payments, which allow merchants to process credit card payments using smartphones and tablets. Merchants process payments using a physical credit card reader attached to a mobile device or by scanning previously stored credit card information from a mobile app, as is the case with mobile wallets. Benefits include convenience, a streamlined POS system and access to a breadth of business opportunities based on collected consumer data. Nevertheless, mobile payments as a whole remains a hotly debated topic among retailers, customers and industry experts alike.

Although mobile payment adoption has been slow, consumers are steadily shifting their preferences as an increasing number of merchants implement mobile payment technologies (made easier and more accessible by major mobile payment players such as Square and PayPal). To stay competitive, it’s more important than ever for small businesses to stay current and understand where mobile payment technology is heading.

If you’re considering adopting mobile payments or are simply curious about the technology, here are mobile payment myths that you may have heard, but are completely untrue. 

All rates are conveniently the same. Thanks to the marketing of big players like Square and PayPal – which are not actually credit card processors, but aggregators rates can vary widely and significantly. For instance, consider that the average debit rate is 1.35 percent. Square’s is 2.75 percent and PayPal Here’s is 2.7 percent, so customers will have to pay an additional 1.41 percent and 1.35 percent, respectively, using these two services. Some cards also get charged well over 4 percent, such as foreign rewards cards. These companies profit & mobile customers lose. Always read the fine print.

Credit card information is stored on my mobile device after a transaction. Good mobile developers do not store any critical information on the device. That information should only be transferred through an encrypted, secure handshake between the application and the processor. No information should be stored or left hanging around following the transaction.

I already have a POS system – the hassle isn’t worth it. Mobile payments offer more flexibility to reach the customer than ever before. No longer are sales people tied to a cash register and counters to finish the sale. That flexibility can mean the difference between revenue and a lost sale. Mobile payments also have the latest technology to track sales, log revenue, fight chargebacks, and analyze performance quickly and easily.

If we build it, they will come. Many wallet providers believe that if you simply build a new mobile payment method into the phones, consumers will adopt it as their new wallet.   This includes proponents of NFC technology, QR codes, Bluetooth and other technologies, but given very few merchants have the POS systems to accept these new types of technologies, consumers have not adopted. Currently, only 6.6 percent of merchants can accept NFC, and even less for QR codes or BLE technology, hence the extremely slow adoption rate.  Simply put, the new solutions are NOT convenient, and do not replace consumers’ existing wallets, not even close.

It raises the risk of fraud. Fraud’s always a concern. However, since data isn’t stored on the device for Square and others, the data is stored on their servers, the risk is lessened. For example, there’s no need for you to fear one of your employees walking out with your tablet and downloading all of your customers’ info from the tablet. There’s also no heightened fraud risk for data loss if a tablet or mobile device is ever sold.

Mobile processing apps are error-free. Data corruption glitches do happen on wireless mobile devices. A merchant using mobile credit card processing apps needs to be more diligent to review their mobile processing transactions. Mobile technology is fantastic when it works.

Mobile wallets are about to happen. They aren’t about to happen, especially in developed markets like the U.S. It took 60 years to put in the banking infrastructure we have today and it will take years for mobile wallets to achieve critical mass here.

Setup is difficult and complicated. Setting up usually just involves downloading the vendor’s app and following the necessary steps to get the hardware and software up and running. The beauty of modern payment solutions is that like most mobile apps, they are built to be user-friendly and intuitive so merchants would have little trouble setting them up. Most mobile payment providers offer customer support as well, so you can always give them a call in the unlikely event that you have trouble setting up the system.

The biggest business opportunity in the mobile payments space is in developed markets. While most investments and activity in the Mobile Point of Sale space take place today in developed markets (North America and Western Europe), the largest opportunity is actually in emerging markets where most merchants are informal and by definition can’t get a merchant account to accept card payments. Credit and debit card penetration is higher in developed markets, but informal merchants account for the majority of payments volume in emerging markets and all those transactions are conducted in cash today.

Wireless devices are unreliable. Reliability is very often brought up as I think many businesses are wary of fully wireless setups. I think this is partly justified, but very easily mitigated, for example with a separate Wi-Fi network solely for point of sale and payments. With the right device, network equipment, software and card processor, reliability shouldn’t be an issue.

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