Merchant Account: Expanding Your Small Business
By financen | June 29, 2010 - 2:22 am - Posted in Merchant Account, Small Business

Today’s tough economic situation has been difficult to small business owners all over. Faced with decreasing sales, shrinking customer base, increasing administrative costs, and tighter lending, business owners are trying to find new ways to keep their businesses alive. Operations that have been traditional cash heavy operations-small eateries, bars, etc, are increasingly becoming more accepting of credit cards in an effort to maintain their competitiveness.

Businesses looking to generate more sales and customers can do so through processing credit cards. Due to the numerous benefits that they offer- with flexibility and convenience chiefly among them, many of today’s shoppers prefer to use credit cards when buying goods/services in-stores and online. The easiest and best way to put your business on the road to credit card processing is by acquiring a merchant account.

A merchant account is essentially serves as a bank account that allows a business to accept a payment made via credit or debit card. The first step in setting up a merchant account is figuring out the solution that best suits your business. This should be assessed largely based upon your business model, service/ product mix, and the industry in which you operate.

ISO’s– short for Independent Service Organizations, are third party processors that help businesses set up merchant accounts that are tailored to their business. These accounts are almost always established with a financial institution- typically a bank partnered with the ISO. In a typical transaction, a customer’s credit/debit card is swiped and the requested amount is tested against available funds or a credit limit. From their, the transaction is either accepted or declined.

If accepted, funds are then transferred to the business’s merchant account and then ultimately deposited into a checking account within three business days.

It is vitally important that a merchant account be able to do the following:

1. Process credit/debit cards in real time
2. Issue credits and voids.
3. Transactions are able to be viewed online.

You should make sure that your business’s merchant account is verified and effective secure as to protect you and your customers. For more information on merchant accounts, check out North American Bancard’s website and Wikipedia as both have very good information regarding the topic.

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Secret to credit card debt settlement
By financen | June 21, 2010 - 4:36 pm - Posted in credit card debt settlement

Being in debt is a very stressful situation. A person in this situation can easily get frustrated on anything happening around him. For example, the phone ringing off the hook because of collection calls from the creditors or the collection agencies or the mailbox getting filled by collection notices can easily make him furious and nervous. Even though these things can be miserable to experience, but there are ways to come out of this mess. If you notice carefully, these collection calls and notices by the creditors are giving hints that they are willing to settle the accounts with you according to what you can afford and clear the past dues. Most of the creditors will be willing to offer you a debt solution plan that can help you get out of the credit card debts.

Agree to a single part payment : If the creditors have sensed that you will not be able to make payments towards your debts and that you are considering to file for bankruptcy, they will allow you to make a single part payment, if that’s what you can afford to pay back. They will like to get back as much as possible from you so that the balance can be adjusted towards the principal amount. fortunately, this could work well for you too if you don’t intend to file for bankruptcy.

Most of the credit card companies will be willing to settle the debts if the accounts are delinquent for more than ninety days. However, if you have just made a small payment towards your debt, they will not offer you this kind of debt solution.

Make sure that when you are negotiating with the credit card companies to knock down the outstanding balance to less than half, you should put yourself at an advantage before the process starts.

Keep in mind that that all the credit card debt solution plans will not make your entire balance go away after the settlement is offered. There are some unique cases where the unpaid balance of your credit card debt will be sent to some outside collection agency to handle. They will add all their interests and fees and try to recover as much as possible from you. Make sure that you get everything in writing after you have settled the account with the original creditor and you are not bound to pay back the balance waived off by the creditor.

Be aware that the unpaid debt whose balance is $600 or more is considered by the IRS as an income earned and thus it is taxable. This amount will appear on the 1099 tax form sent by the creditor after the account gets settled.

Credit card debt solution will hurt your credit ratings. Try to work out all possible arrangements with the creditor directly before the account gets “charged off” and is sent to some collection agency. A negative remark is bound to appear on your credit report if you are considering a debt solution, but it is better to have an account reported as “settled for a lesser amount” rather than waiting for it to get “charged off” and damage your credit ratings severely.

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Using a law firm for credit repair
By financen | June 7, 2010 - 2:10 pm - Posted in Credit, Credit Repair, Credit report, Credit Score

Your credit rating is the most important factor in front of anyone. You will need to have a good credit standing when you are applying for a job or when you are looking for some financial debt help from the banks and other prestigious financial institutions. Your credit can dictate the house you live in, the car you drive in. The information contained in your credit report is used for many different life events. Your credit scores will go down if your information providers have reported some negative remarks to the credit bureaus. It doesn’t mean that the negative items cannot be fixed. There are reputed credit repair companies that can help you mend a broken credit score.

 

 

Taking the help of a law firm to repair your credit is a good idea. These law firms have been helping people with bad credit to remove the negative items so that they can regain their financial worthiness. With the help of the law firm, people who earlier had bad credit are now able to have normal productive new lives as unverifiable and erroneous information were immediately removed from their credit report. These law firms use the credit repair review which finds out why you were denied in getting a new car, a home or a new career.

According to the FTC, an average person can usually spend at least 100 hours just to fix one negative item on his credit report. Anyone can get an inaccurate negative item removed from his credit report by contacting the credit bureaus, but doing so, you have to go through a lot of red tape and call each company reporting on your credit report. Most of the times, the credit grantors will give you a run around that can delay the whole process. These law firms in such situations seem to be a great relief as they work with credit agencies and the credit bureaus with the objective of removing the negative items on your credit report.

When you are looking for a company to fix your credit report, give more preference to a law firm because they have their licensed attorneys and they know the laws as per the FDCPA and the FCRA. They can not only empower the customers with knowledge and work out possible ways to fix their credit ratings, but can also take legal actions against the credit grantors and credit bureaus if they seem to be violating the laws and reporting inaccurate information even after providing proof.

There are different services available with credit repair from ala carta to monthly membership levels. There is a plan for all kinds of people who are looking to fix their credit ratings. If you are interested, law firms can set up your account within the same day and start the credit repair process after you provide them the latest copy of your credit report and put a request on the items to be investigated.

Credit repair process with the law firms is simple and easy. You just have to sit back and relax in the comfort of your living room. You can stay posted on the status of your account by logging into the online account with them. If you feel that your score is out of control then you could benefit from a credit repair review and have an experienced professional aid you with your credit problems. If you feel like someone else is driving your score, than you could definitely benefit from their knowledge.

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