Don Davis writes for Internet Retailer about how ecommerce merchants can reduce payments acceptance costs.

"To get the best deal, retailers must be prepared to go shopping among the many processors—or transaction acquirers in payments lingo—vying for their business, and to examine every rate and fee in the contract," says Allen Weinberg of payments consulting firm Glenbrook Partners.

“The guiding principle is that everything is negotiable,” Weinberg says. “But it’s important to keep in mind that every acquirer has a profitability target they feel they must meet. If you win on a couple of points, they will likely try to make it up in another area.”

Frontier Airlines and First Data have announced "an agreement with respect to the continued processing of Frontier's Visa and MasterCard charges without any interruption. The agreement provides First Data with appropriate protection for continuing its processing work for customer credit card purchases on a "business as usual" basis." READ MORE »

The Direct Response Forum (DRF), a trade association for payments professionals in the direct response industry, has announced the full agenda of educational sessions that will be offered at its annual meeting on August 11th, 12th and 13th at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel. READ MORE »

APACS has announced the volume and value figures for the first three days’ operation of the new Faster Payments Service, launched on Tuesday, May 27. "In total, between just after midnight on Tuesday 27th May and today at 12.45pm, 318,405 faster payments have been processed to a value of £200,127,682.03. This equates to around 90,000 payments a day, 3,750 payments an hour – one every second – with an average value of over £625 per payment." READ MORE »

The UK mobile payment initiative payforIT has announced it is expanding onto the World Wide Web with the help of mobile interactive specialist Dialogue Communications. The payforIT payment mechanism will offer shoppers an online payment alternative and enable ecommerce merchants to reach new customers. READ MORE »

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