Mastercard and Discover have relaxed the requirements they set previously for debit, gift, and pre-paid credit cards. We’ll take a look at what was initially required and what is now actually required.

Mastercard and Discover recently announced new rules concerning how merchants process, handle, and refund debit cards, pre-paid cards, and gift cards. Here is a summary of what’s changing, when it’s required to be implemented, and how it may affect merchants and customers.

If you are running an ecommerce store, accept PayPal as a payment option, and are still using “PayPal Standard” as the integration method, you may want to consider switching to PayPal Express Checkout. The Express method offers many advantages, and is just as easy to implement as PayPal Standard.

A DUNS number is a special number issued by Dun & Bradstreet to track a business so that information about that business can be reported to other institutions. Why would a business want one?

Payment Card Industry (PCI) security compliance requirements are quite thorough, and can be very confusing for merchants. Although there is a centralized resource for PCI matters (The PCI Security Standards Council website), the actual rules to follow when trying to achieve compliance are often misunderstood. We’ll take a look at some simple steps to help you achieve PCI compliance without too much pain.