| Peer review: Merchants pay fees for sales that use plastic
A You have heard correctly: Merchants pay fees when you use your plastic for purchases. Those charges are called "interchange fees," although there may be some fees with other names built in as well. The system is fairly complicated, but the fact is that if you spend $100 using plastic when shopping, the merchant likely will see only $98 or $99 of it. Credit-card and debit signature transactions typically cost merchants between 1 percent and 2 percent of the purchase amount in fees, depending on the type of card and the banks involved. Debit transactions using a PIN cost the merchants much less, around 0.2 to 0.5 percent. These fees are divided among the bank that issued the card, the credit-card network (Visa, MasterCard, etc.), and the merchant's account provider. Some have called those fees an implicit tax, because merchants pass the costs on to customers in the form of higher prices.
AllState merchant Service, LLC. www.allstatevmc.com 866.541.8472 ...
We will begin training and hiring for the Brooklyn New York AllState Merchant Service (AMS) February 15th, 2008. In 2008 we intend to hire a minimum of 400 new account managers which will build relationships, grow their customer base and will provide proper customized vehicles for merchants which accept or want to accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, debit cards, electronic checks etc' We are committed to reliability, customer service and assure each merchant of a dedicated account representative for quality account management. AMS also offers a variety of credit card processing terminals, pos systems, web based processing systems for retail, mail/ phone order, internet based, and home based and service related industries. AllState Merchant Service, LLC. guarantees customer satisfaction and discounted rates.
Cards: Opportunities Abound In Crowded Payments Field
In the course of a decade, card-based payments have doubled in volume to account for 28 percent of all consumer payments. It's nearly half of the payments pie when excluding the amount spent on auto loans, mortgages and other debt vehicles unsuitable for cards. Credit or debit card use at the point of sale represents 56 percent of all purchases, interchange now accounts for 19 percent of issuers' revenues, and the number of card-accepting merchants now tops 6.1 million. It's obvious that consumers are comfortable swiping cards for groceries, utility bills, morning coffee and hamburgers. But as Celent notes in a new report on payment trends, cards are not close to conquering cash and checks: cards' growth market is $4.5 trillion. Much of that growth is going to be fueled by evolving trends in consumer behavior, added merchant choices and technology, as bank issuers seek innovative ways of building and retaining card customers whose average cost of acquisition is between $50 and $300.
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