| Small businesses can chop through the forest of credit card fees
Small businesses accept payment cards because it's easy for their customers. But with fees tacked on by as many as 12 intermediaries – from the equipment provider to the card issuers themselves – payment processing is often the third- or fourth-highest expense for a small business. "Small merchants are eaten alive by all the middlemen," says Bob Carr, chief executive of Heartland Payment Systems Inc., a large payment processor based in Princeton, N.J. It's a burden most accept, partly because nearly 60 percent of consumers ages 18 to 25 use cards as their primary payment method, according to Visa USA Inc. Still, many business owners feel overwhelmed by the complexity of the fees and the bills that list them. MasterCard and Visa have a forest of rate categories: MasterCard says it has about 170, Visa fewer than 100.
Morrow gets assist from state
Morrow will get free help to eliminate the village's debt after being declared in fiscal watch by the state. "When a local government is experiencing financial difficulty, we want to provide assistance to help them improve their situation and restore financial stability as soon as possible," State Auditor Mary Taylor said. Taylor declared the village in fiscal watch last Thursday after the Local Government Services Section analyzed the village's financial condition. Council requested the Chapter 118 analysis when it believed the village had a deficit of nearly $96,000 in the general fund — figures from a December 2006 checkbook. However, Mayor Bob Brown said that, as of September, the deficit is down to $36,000 after countless hours of village officials working on the finances.
Liberia: IMF Takes Step to Clear Country's Debt
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has announced sufficient funding for the IMF arrears clearance. According to the Finance Ministry release, the IMF announced yesterday that they have received pledges from IMF member countries equal to the debt owed by Liberia to it. .
Many retailers easy to hack, study finds
Half of more than 3,000 retail stores that a wireless security company secretly monitored at major shopping areas in the U.S. and Europe use wireless data systems vulnerable to hacking, the company said Thursday. The data that stores routinely transmit on wireless networks include credit card and Social Security numbers and other sensitive customer information. AirDefense Inc., an Atlanta-based maker of security products for wireless data systems, found that about 25 percent of the stores' 4,748 wireless access points were exchanging data with no encryption at all to foil electronic eavesdroppers. Another 25 percent were using an outdated encryption method called Wireless Equivalent Privacy that is easily cracked by thieves using widely available tools.
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