Businesses Can Get Significant Relief on Operational Costs

Todd S. Whiton, CEO, Capital Payments, LLC

The past few months have been a difficult time for many businesses trying to navigate the turbulent waters of today’s economy. Being proactive in reducing operational costs to dramatically increase cash flow has been a key initiative to survive. Simply stated, more cash flow translates into more time to concentrate on one’s core business; more time to focus on marketing, strategic planning and client needs.

It is absolutely critical to maintain a healthy cash flow by securing revenue as efficiently and quickly as possible. By now, most businesses realize credit and debit card acceptance is a major component of good cash management in today’s economic environment. However, it’s also important to realize that not all merchant services providers are created equal. At the risk of sounding cliché, “caveat emptor” can easily be applied to the merchant services business. In “Dirty Little Secrets of Merchant Services,” a whitepaper I wrote in 2007, I talk about the elements of deliberate obfuscation, a ‘hit and run’ sales mentality and the fine print terms and conditions that separate one merchant processor from another.

Capital Payments typically saves businesses 10-40% of merchant processing costs. Many businesses don’t realize that 70% of credit card processing costs are variable – and, therefore, manageable. Unraveling the complexity of payment processing costs in terms of interchange optimization is one of the founding principles of Capital Payments. As an example, through an analysis of their businesses’ current credit card processing situation, one of our CPA partners was able to present two of their B2B clients a combined percentage savings of over 25% -- equating to $42,000 annually. Money saved and quickly put back into managing their businesses. Another partner saved 26% in operation costs, and was afforded a cumulative merchant services savings of 11% on five retail businesses he owned.

There’s no denying that in today’s economy, it’s prudent for businesses to re-evaluate their payment card processor – to take a closer look at what they are gaining, and potentially losing, with the status quo. If a business is with the right merchant processor, there’s money out there to be saved.