| Payment vendor woos e-retailers with promise of lower transaction fees
Online retailers consistently complain about the high fees they pay on credit card purchases, typically 2% for big e-retailers and considerably more for smaller ones. Start-up HomeATM ePayment Solutions says it has a way to reduce those fees significantly, although some payment experts are skeptical. HomeATM has developed a small magnetic stripe reader with a personal identification number, or PIN, pad that can be plugged into a personal computer. That would enable a consumer to swipe his debit card and enter his PIN, just as he would at an ATM or at store checkout counter, sending the transaction through the debit networks that typically charge lower fees than credit card networks, according to Mitchell Cobrin, chief operating officer. While PIN debit interchange varies with the network and type of merchant, it typically ranges from 40 cents to $2 per transaction, and in some cases is a flat fee, as opposed to a percentage of the purchase amount, as with credit card transactions.
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.
May 2006
This fancy marigold, and five of his seedpack mates joined the cast of the garden yesterday, as I prepare beds for the impending planting out of our great looking tomato plants.Posted by PicasaHeading back to tour by the gardens around the house, I found the blue columbine opening nicely...Posted by PicasaThere's an old azalea at one end of the front garden. Last year I had to trim off lots of deadwood, and it's left looking almost standard-like, with some newer growth at the bottom. This year, at the very base of the bush, we are enjoying a single blossom. At least it's a great one!Posted by PicasaYes, and there's still more spiderwort in bloom. Someone wrote to me to tell me that they are known in Provincetown as Widows Tears (a sweeter name than what I knew it by)...and I've since found that it's called that in some plant catalogs, as well.
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