Thursday 18 August 2011

Merchant Services and Merchant Account


Have you noticed how those electronic Chip and PIN card machines have made their way into almost every retail outlet within less than a decade? I noticed this occurring and I knew it was vital that my small business evolved with this financial trend.
I wanted to share with my followers here on Blogger because I know many of you own businesses and know how hard it is to budget but also keep up to date with the best equipment.
However, credit card processing is more than simple having a card machine, you will also need somewhere for the funds to be deposited when a customer is charged. It is not enough to have a regular bank account, you must get approved for a dedicated Merchant Account and the card users details are checked by the machine using a secret pin-code only they know and electronically transferred to your account.
I checked with my bank but they were asking ridiculously high rates to submit a Merchant bank account application and I decided to look elsewhere. Now that I knew it was Merchant Services I was looking for I typed in words like 'Merchant Account providers', 'payment service provider' and 'credit card merchant account'.
The top site that came up in Google UK was 'Seymour Direct' and it has a delightfully welcoming homepage with clear images and concise descriptions of various Chip and PIN card machines. There was also a helpful blog and resources that explained the history of credit card payments.
I used their live support chat function and a specialist Merchant's account adviser helped me organize the documentation I need and got me a great quote on a Merchant bank account.
Everything was handled swiftly and I was kept up to date with the process, my Bluetooth Ingenico Bluetooth card machine's were delivered within a matter of days.

Saturday 13 August 2011

Funny Facebook Status


I have a very cool blog post to share with my followers today, it is aimed at Facebook users, which is almost everyone!
We all love Facebook for the apps, games and socializing capabilities it brings us and we often like to express our individuality to friends on our Facebook wall.
I often see a good friend of sharing very funny Facebook status messages on my News Feed and I realized he was getting them from article lists he found on Google.
I did some research myself and actually found a variation, some people were looking for 'Twitter status' and others were looking for 'love status' messages.
Often you can damage your social circle if you post a used and stale Facebook status, the best funny status messages actually come from websites. I found one specific website which updates daily with fresh status messages from all different subject topics and even provides ones related to current events.