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Merchant Account
A merchant account is a contractual agreement between a merchant and payment processor / bank that provides a particular type of transaction processing service that gives businesses the ability to accept debit and credit cards in payment for goods and services they offer their customers in lieu of cash. This can be face-to-face, over the phone, or via a secure checkout page of an online digital shopping cart or hosted payment page on a secure payment gateway over the internet. Credit and Debit cards have become the preferred method of secure payment in today's marketplace, making a merchant account essential for most businesses to be able to sell goods or services to the credit card wielding consumer.Payment processors or credit card processing services are typically provided by banks that are members of the Visa or MasterCard networks. Processing banks in most cases both issue credit cards and help merchants process transactions while accepting them for payment, but over time the payment processing industry has consolidated. At present, very few banks issue credit cards and the industry is dominated by a few large card issuers such as Elavon, Citibank, Capital One, Bank of America, and Chase. Even fewer banks are currently processing credit card transactions for the simple fact that banks found that it was not within their sales skills to convince every small merchant to accept credit cards, and they thus began to outsource the selling of such services to small companies called ISO's (Independent Sales Organizations).They also found that massive scale helped reduce the cost of processing credit cards, so they began to outsource processing to a few giant processors including Elavon, TSYS, First Data and MSI. Now, while some merchants buy their credit card processing services directly from a bank, more typically they get their credit card processing services from an ISO, the ISO becomes the catalyst which is responsible for selling the service to the merchant, providing technical support. In turn the processor (processing bank) is responsible for processing the transactions including authorizing it and then electronically submitting the cardholders transactional information to the Visa or MasterCard network. The processor bears the risk of chargeback's, and sets the price of the services based upon factors such as risk and other costs. If the ISO is a small ISO it might outsource some of those services (for example providing technical support) to a larger ISO. Except for the few very largest ISOs, the ISO outsources the actual processing to a larger company that focuses solely on the payment or transaction processing. While all of the processing provider business types discussed above provides merchant accounts or merchant services and could legitimately be called the merchant account provider, the phrase " payment processor " usually refers to whichever organization has responsibility for directly maintaining the relationship with the merchant and is the first point of contact for the merchant in cases of support or technical issues.
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Merchant Taylors - Home
The Merchant Taylors' Company is one of the Great Twelve Livery Companies of the City of London. Founded in the 13th Century as a religious and social fraternity, today the Company is an association of philanthropic and social character, devoting its energies to educational and charitable activities.
The Merchant Taylors' Hall itself is unique in its elegance, charm and illustrious heritage. It is singularly disposed to host a full range of events from luncheons, dinners, banquets, weddings and receptions to operas and concerts, in the most superb of settings right in the heart of the City.
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