BluePay Blog

Baseball enthusiasts may disagree, but when you run the numbers, “retail therapy” is officially America’s favorite pastime. As a nation, we love going to the mall, window-shopping, and coming home with new gadgets and toys.  At least, this used to be the case.  In recent years, this time-honored tradition has evolved as retailers increasingly welcome a new breed of American consumer — one whose shopping preferences and technological knowhow are vastly different from anything we knew before. 

Topics: Payment Trends, Small Business Tips, PCI Compliance and Fraud Prevention, E-Commerce and Online Payments, B2B, Mobile Payments, Payment Technology

The BluePay Blog is dedicated to providing you with useful information to help you understand payments, learn best business practices, or stay attuned to security concerns. We continually publish new content, averaging over 125 posts annually. We took a look at our blog to see which posts resonate with our visitors. Here is a list of our top 10 popular blog posts. If you haven’t read them yet, click on the links below.

Topics: Awareness, Getting Started with Payments, Small Business Tips, Enterprise Business Tips, PCI Compliance and Fraud Prevention, Payment Technology, E-Commerce and Online Payments

Logging into websites is a time-honored ritual with which we’re all familiar:  You enter your username (or email)  You type in your password (or PIN)  And you’re in.  However, it’s fairly easy for criminals to hack this process. This is especially true if you use weak passwords such as “1234” or “password.”  For this reason, many websites now require that you use a combination of the following when generating secure passwords:

Topics: PCI Compliance and Fraud Prevention, Payment Technology, Financial Institutions, E-Commerce and Online Payments

Most brick-and-mortar businesses that accept plastic rely on heavy, static readers to process credit cards at the checkout counter. In fact, these stationary terminals have been a staple of retail for decades.  With the birth of mobile payment processing, businesses could suddenly begin accepting credit cards on the go. 

Topics: Payment Trends, PCI Compliance and Fraud Prevention, Payment Technology, Mobile Payments, EMV

In recent years, we've heard about the shared economy and the on-demand economy. Now, there's the API economy. With each economy that emerges, it's important to know what it involves and how you can become a part of it to leverage any relevant benefits for your business. Although this meaning of economy is slightly different, it's important to know what it involves because today's businesses do need to consider leveraging APIs to service unique customer needs and expectations.

Topics: ISV/VAR, Software and Payment Integration, Payment Technology, Due.com Partner Posts, B2B

Three years ago this month, the credit card industry introduced new liability rules designed to reduce payment card fraud. In 2015, traditional plastic was still widely used throughout retail, but these older cards relied on magnetic stripes that could easily be cloned, manipulated or erased.  In effect, “magstripe” plastic was seen as too vulnerable. Thus, the payment industry wanted merchants and consumers to adopt EMV credit card processing.

Topics: PCI Compliance and Fraud Prevention, Payment Technology, EMV

Payment gateway technology captures credit card and ACH data from customers and sends this information to payment processors for authorization.  The sheer number of payment gateway options is enormous. Each solution has slightly different features, benefits and add-ons from which to choose.

Topics: Consideration, Getting Started with Payments, Small Business Tips, Enterprise Business Tips, Software and Payment Integration, Payment Technology, E-Commerce and Online Payments

There are three essential components you need to bring together to accept credit cards:  A merchant account. This is essentially a bank account that allows you to accept incoming credit card payments.  A payment processor. This term is used interchangeably with merchant account provider. When you apply for an account to accept payments, your provider will set you up with an acquiring bank and the connections to authorize and settle transactions into your bank account of choice. A payment gateway. This is the tool that captures credit card data before sending it to your processor. Think of it as an “online” credit card terminal. 

Topics: Merchant Accounts, Getting Started with Payments, Small Business Tips, Enterprise Business Tips, E-Commerce and Online Payments, Payment Technology

If you’ve been following our blog for a while, you know that independent software vendors (ISVs) are increasingly expected to provide their end-users with seamless payment functionality.  This isn’t an industry requirement, per se.  But if the applications you design don’t come with payment processing capabilities, then perspective customers will simply find an ISV that can provide these things.

Topics: ISV/VAR, Software and Payment Integration, PCI Compliance and Fraud Prevention, Payment Technology

Open source contamination is the bane of many independent software vendors (ISVs). If even a tiny snippet of open source code makes it into your build, the entire application might legally be reclassified as “open source.”  To avoid this, developers must invest a lot of time creating bespoke code entirely from scratch. As an ISV, there’s another type of “contamination” of which you need to be aware — one that has to do with payment security. Or more specifically, PCI compliance. 

Topics: ISV/VAR, Software and Payment Integration, Payment Technology, PCI Compliance and Fraud Prevention