Merchant Cash Advance Blog

For many retailers, the back-to-school season offers a rush of customers buying new products, services and wardrobes to help see them through the latest semester. However, customers are spending in smaller volumes this year, demonstrating that business owners need to devise new ways of attracting shoppers and driving their customers toward their checkout registers and credit card processing services. 

Families with school-age children will spend an average of $634.78 on apparel, shoes, supplies and electronics for school purposes this year, down from the $688.62 recorded in regards to the same statistic at this time last year, according to a report from the National Retail Federation compiled by Prosper Insights & Analytics. Total domestic back-to-school spending is expected to exceed $26 billion. When you include back-to-college spending, then the number increases to over $72 billion. 

Many business owners think that the latest social media websites are the most effective way to drive consumer attention to their products - and toward their online credit card processing terminals. 

However, a more classical form of digital communication may still be the preference of the average customer: aside from search engines, consumers would rather learn about stores and promotions via email than they would by any other means, according to a new survey conducted by Millward Brown Digital.

Many Americans are looking for new ways to optimize the manner by which they make payments. 

United Healthcare is hoping to innovate such things in the medical field. The firm announced earlier this week that they will allow its customers to pay their medical bills online with a credit card, making them the first national insurer to offer such capability.

The back to school shopping rush is a yearly tradition, but recent studies suggest that American consumers may be approaching their purchases in a different way this year. Findings suggest that customers are expecting more out of the online merchant account services offered to them by retailers, and that they'll turn to competitors if they provide optimized e-commerce services. Virtual credit card terminals are no longer enough to satisfy consumers - now the entire shopping process must be filtered through a smartphone.