A Better Bolt: We’re Making the Simplest Integration Even Simpler

If you’re a business owner, you know that the habits and expectations of shoppers are changing all the time. It’s tough to keep up with the shifts in commerce, and if you’re a proud parent of an online store, you understand the challenges in keeping your online shoppers engaged - there are a lot of distractions out there! For all the eCommerce owners, we want to remind you about a partner shopping cart solution of ours called Magento 2.0. One of the most popular eCommerce solutions, Magento 2.0 is the perfect add-on for engaging with customers across any platform or device and minimizing issues like shopping cart abandonment. It’s a solution that offers fantastic customization options for your online store, so you can maintain your brand exactly the way you want to plus create your ideal experience for your customers. A powerful combination, CardConnect’s secure payment processing and Magento’s customization tools can provide a simple, safe and seamless experience for you and your customers. CardConnect’s security solutions like our PCI-validated point-to-point encryption (P2PE) and patented tokenization can reduce your Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) audit scope, so you can save time and money. We want to make sure you’re always growing your business, which is why we offer the best shopping cart solutions on the market. If you’re interested in learning more or just ready to get started, check out our Support Center and complete the short form so our teams can get in touch.

If you’re a business that accepts in-store credit card payments, choosing the best point-of-sale (POS) solution can be overwhelming. How do you know what’s really going to be best for your business, and for the long haul? Our Chief Security Officer Rush Taggart pulled together his best advice for businesses on the hunt for the perfect POS, and shared it with PaymentsSource’s PayThink column. The research can be intimidating but with these tips in mind, you can keep focused on finding the solution built to help you grow. CONSIDER FUNCTIONALITY. Keeping your merchants’ private information secure is your responsibility as a business owner, which means you have to pay attention to the technology your prospective POS uses to protect data. Put trust in providers that secure payments with EMV, PCI-validated tokenization, and point-to-point encryption. Technology like NFC, or contactless payments, is also important to consider, especially given its anticipated adoption rate. ADDRESS PRICING HONESTLY. If you can’t get a straight answer about pricing, then you may want to move on. That information should be transparent and readily available. GIVE THEIR CUSTOMER SERVICE A TEST DRIVE. You want to feel supported by the POS solution provider that you choose. Try giving their customer service line a call and see what level of support you experience. TEST IT OUT. If you’re able to get a demo, make sure you observe the speed, ease-of-use and compatibility of the POS solution you’re looking into. ASK YOUR PEERS. Take advantage of trade association groups to see who they might recommend for POS solution providers, and ask other members about the experiences they’ve had (good and bad). Your perfect POS solution is out there, you just have to find it, and you will! If you'd like to speak to someone at CardConnect about solutions that could be the fit for you, visit our Sign Up page and we'll put you directly in touch with someone. To read the full article from Rush, click here.

Business owners sure have been through a lot when it comes to the evolution of credit card payments. In the span of 60 years, we’ve gone from the introduction of the first plastic credit card by American Express all the way to the ease of Apple and Google Pay. It’s hard to keep up with ever-changing payment technology, but there’s a new change in particular coming next month that ought to make merchants (and their customers) pretty pleased. You may have heard that the major credit card brands MasterCard, Discover, American Express and Visa have all agreed to spare merchants the need to make customers sign for credit card purchases. That’s right. Think of all the extra time you’ll have! OK, that may be a slight exaggeration, but when you’ve got 15 customers in line, every little step toward streamlining the checkout process counts. Not to mention, your customers will be happy they won’t have to scribble some illegible shape just to get the transaction over with. Visa was the last to get onboard with the no signature thing and earlier this year announced they would make the signature requirement optional for all EMV contact or contactless chip-enabled merchants. That’s a pretty good deal. Digital Transactions magazine is actually predicting Visa’s condition will “provide another boost for merchants who have yet to adopt chip-card acceptance.” According to data from Visa, EMV technology has been tremendously successful at reducing fraud at the point of sale, with a noticeable decline of 66% for chip-enabled merchants. You can check out each card brand’s announcements about the signature change by clicking on the below: MasterCard Discover American Express Visa Together they’ve decided that the signature is no longer a necessary part of the checkout process, especially considering the more modern measures now taken to protect customer data. This change is not expected to have an impact on security because solutions like EMV technology and tokenization have come to serve as much more valuable methods to protect merchants and customers against fraud. What it certainly will have an impact on is the customer experience during checkout. “The move will help merchants speed customers through checkout, provide more consistent experiences for every customer with every purchase and should decrease costs associated with safely storing signatures.” MasterCard For businesses with CardConnect merchant accounts, you’ll be happy to know we’ve been making changes on our end too so you’ll have updated terminals in time for the removal of signature. Please keep in mind, this requirement change is absolutely optional. There may be instances where merchants would like to continue to require capturing the signature of their customers, and if that’s the case, you are more than welcome to do so. For example, you may have a return policy that you’d like your customers to acknowledge, in which case you may want to continue to have them sign a copy of the receipt for your records. Or, if you aren’t accepting EMV cards at this time, it may still be a good idea to grab customer signatures. If you’re ready to update your equipment to get rid of the signature requirement for purchases, visit the dedicated page our Support Center that provides instructions for the steps to take, depending on the equipment you’re using to process with CardConnect.