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| As a merchant, retailer,
online store, convenience store, and restaurant, you need a machine or equipment to
process credit card sales. Consumers are becoming more cashless. Personal
checks are high risk, and thus credit cards appear to be the best and safest intermediary.
Merchants normally get direct deposit for funds in 48 hours and customers are
protected from illegal use and fraud. This intermediary relationship has forced a 2-3% "tax" on all purchases and transactions. This "tax" of course is being referred to the fee that Visa, Mastercard, American Express (as highas 4%), and Discover charges their merchants to be able to accept their cards. This 2-3% tax is eventually passed on to the customer. Customers who are able to use their credit cards responsibily benefit, while those paying cash basically gain nothing for this price increase. Consumers who use their credit cards, pay it monthly, pay no annual fee and even get cash back, merchandise rewards or airline mileage reep the greatest benefits. Not only do they get to hold their cash for extended period of time, but they also get a rebate back. Merchant credit card machines. Process your credit card sales with these industry standard units from Nurit and Tranz Hypercom Verifone. Select from thermal or impact dot matrix models. Save up to 70% from retail prices. Do not buy these machines from your bank or credit card processor, buy direct from us and save on merchant credit card processing machines. Buy the latest credit card processing machines with all the new features you need. Great for retail, mail order, restaurants, delis and convenient stores. Choose from Hypercom, Nurit and Tranz Verifone. Full manufacturer's warranty and refurbished models are also available. Process your Visa, Mastercard MC, American Express, and Discover Card today. ----------------------------- News summary: Source: http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds/ap/2005/02/08/ap1813046.html Visa USA, the largest U.S. credit card issuer, on Tuesday (2/22/05) reported consumers' use of debit and prepaid cards helped drive total spending up 19.1 percent last year to a record $1.045 trillion. The San Francisco-based company - whose member banks are its shareholders - said the use of debit cards reached record volumes in 2004 as spending increased 19.7 percent to $346 billion. Volume on prepaid cards grew 112 percent over last year. Debit and prepaid cards have been gaining popularity during the past several years as consumers have begun to prefer non-cash methods of payment and Visa, as well as rival MasterCard International, have spent more money on marketing these methods. Visa said it had 458 million cards issued in the United States at the end of the year, up 7 percent from 2003. The card giant said it posted double-digit growth in both consumer and business borrowing during the year. Consumer credit card sales volume in the United States increased 11 percent to $51.7 billion. Visa's results come just days after MasterCard said worldwide spending for the year reached $1.46 trillion, a gain of 10.6 percent from 2003. The growth seen in Visa and MasterCard in the United States comes at a time when both card giants prepare to face new competition. Last year, both companies lost a court battle which would have prevented member banks from issuing third-party cards such as American Express or Discover. |