BluePay Blog

As a budding entrepreneur, you may be tempted to splurge on fancy offices, cool gadgets, and glossy business cards — since these investments can help make your newly formed company seem more legitimate. Yet, covering expenses like these is one of the primary reasons why so many businesses fail in their first few years. They have more money going out than coming in, and it’s just a matter of time before these startups have to close their doors.

Topics: Software and Payment Integration, Small Business Tips

It seems like every few months there’s another retail innovation that dominates the headlines. For example, many storeowners are still reeling from the news about Amazon Go — the first supermarket of its kind.  Although in the pilot phase, Amazon Go takes the concept of “self-checkout” to the next level. Customers can walk in, load their baskets, and walk out — all without interfacing with a cashier. In fact, there’s no physical checkout process — not even with a machine-based scanner. 

Topics: Software and Payment Integration, Payment Technology, Payment Trends

When you launch a store or restaurant, managing inventory is relatively straightforward. As items come and go, you can track everything using nothing more than a simple spreadsheet.  Yet, this inventory management system isn’t sustainable for long:  It’s incredibly time-consuming to track inventory and update records by hand.  You have to “eyeball” when stock is getting low — this can be hit or miss.

Topics: Software and Payment Integration, Small Business Tips

Every organization that captures, processes, stores, transmits, or affects credit card data is expected to comply with the security guidelines established by the Payment Card Industry (PCI).  These data security rules apply to multinationals, small shops and nonprofits alike. Failure to become PCI-compliant can lead to hefty fines for that organization.  Equally important, these guidelines continue to evolve over time as criminals develop newer and smarter data breaching techniques.

Topics: Software and Payment Integration, EMV, E-Commerce and Online Payments, PCI Compliance and Fraud Prevention

Many small business owners are so eager to launch that they invest little time in their point-of-sale (POS) technology. As long as their system can accept credit card payments, they’re satisfied.  Although all POS technologies perform the same basic function, each platform offers slightly different bells and whistles. It’s important you find a solution that meets your business’s needs — both today and for many years to come.

Topics: Software and Payment Integration, EMV, Mobile Payments, Payment Technology, Small Business Tips, Getting Started with Payments

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

Weaving payment tools into the applications you build was once seen as a major cost for independent software vendors (ISVs):  You have to invest more development time to integrate payments. Your clients become more exposed to security risk (i.e., fraud). You have to worry about payment-related patches and updates.  While these costs haven’t disappeared, the ability to provide a frictionless payment experience allows you to reach a much larger audience. End-users want turn-key solutions, not patchworks of third-party add-ons. 

Topics: Software and Payment Integration, E-Commerce and Online Payments, Consideration, ISV/VAR

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

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

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