Cigars, WooCommerce, & payment gateways We provide cigar friendly payment gateways and merchant account solutions for WordPress WooCommerce merchants and have learned a lot about WooCommerce in the process. There are a lot of excellent site building platforms and carts out there these days for the online cigar industry. It can be hard to make up your mind or change what you’re used to. If you are just getting into the e-commerce or high-risk sector, it’s especially tricky because you might not know the first thing about what is best for your web-store. If you’ve been selling online for a while and are looking to improve your performance, it can… Read More
Continue ReadingHTTPS is now an absolute must for high-risk e-commerce SEO
HTTPS is now an absolute must for high-risk e-commerce SEO There’s some fairly big SEO news just around the corner that should be of concern to all online high-risk merchants: Google’s web browser, Chrome, will mark all non-HTTPS sites as “not secure” as of July 2018. Some of you might wonder why this news is significant. It is correct that Google has been identifying non-HTTPS sites for a while now. However, this new security warning implementation is distinct– visually speaking. Additionally, of the recent developments in Google search, ensuring the safety of sensitive information is right up there with the prioritization of mobile-friendly websites. You can see the visual change… Read More
Continue ReadingPrestaShop and high-risk payment gateways: a software spotlight
PrestaShop and high-risk payment gateways: a software spotlight PrestaShop has been around for years and is a great choice for startup high-risk e-commerce merchants who need a scalable platform at a minimum cost. We wrote about PrestaShop years ago, but want to update you on some recent changes. When last we mentioned PrestaShop, they had announced a new plugin with NMI, one of our preferred payment gateways for high-risk e-commerce. PrestaShop makes high-risk e-commerce easy As of April 2018, they now have over 53 payment gateway options. In our opinion, the most notable is the addition of Authorize.Net, another of our preferred payment gateways. This and some other features we’ll… Read More
Continue ReadingHigh-risk payments in 2018
High-risk payments in 2018: confusing, but not impossible If you are like many high-risk merchants, changes in e-commerce and high-risk processing have made the process of making good decisions for your online business more of a challenge lately. These challenges are widespread, but they especially impact website owners selling electronic cigarettes, FFL to FFL sales, cigars, glassware, pipes, or any number of other restricted industries. “High-risk” is a general industry term within the world of credit card processing that basically means your products or services are not supported by all or most major payment gateway and merchant account providers. High-risk merchant accounts for vape, tobacco, and pipes These days the high-risk… Read More
Continue ReadingGoDaddy and high-risk merchants
High-risk e-commerce and GoDaddy Many high-risk merchants – especially startups on a budget, like independently owned e-juice merchants or work from home FFL sites, are attracted to GoDaddy. It has an excellent reputation and is easy to use at a low cost. Making a website from scratch is no easy task, and finding cheap hosting is also getting harder and harder. As a result, GoDaddy can be a great fit, but you will need to know how to set up the payment gateway and back-end credit card processing correctly (don’t worry, we can help). Our experience with GoDaddy We like GoDaddy. We have referred business to them, and have helped… Read More
Continue ReadingShopify & Bold Commerce: a high-risk software spotlight
Shopify & Bold Commerce: a high-risk software spotlight Shopify is one of the biggest names in e-commerce. We have helped hundreds of Shopify merchants who were turned down by Shopify Payments with high- risk processing and e-commerce solutions over the years. While Shopify is well known, you may not have heard of Bold, a company that builds useful e-commerce plug-ins for Shopify. Many of Bold’s apps can be very helpful to your high-risk e-commerce site. Whether these are a recurring membership program for a cigar or wine of the month club, a seamless upsell for a tactical supply website, or a loyalty program for premium cigar websites looking to accept payments… Read More
Continue ReadingQuickBooks Payments & prohibited categories
QuickBooks Payments & prohibited categories We recently helped an online FFL merchant with some basic information on how to accept credit cards through their Wix site, and the topic of QuickBooks processing came up. They were hoping to use QuickBooks to key enter some of their net-30 B2B clients who mail in card numbers on their invoices and do it through Intuit’s standard processing. Luckily, we were able to set them up with an FFL friendly virtual terminal prior to them applying for, and being declined by, QuickBooks Payments. This topic had come up before, although with a vape site using WooCommerce that also wanted to enter their mail-in wholesale distributor payments directly into QuickBooks. That made us… Read More
Continue ReadingWhy now is a great time to sell cigars online
Why now is a great time to sell cigars online The e-commerce cigar clouds are parting, and the sun is coming out If you are considering selling tobacco products online in 2018 and beyond, the new leadership at the FDA holds real promise for your business. Among other things, Washington DC’s apparent change in attitude toward premium cigar merchants has made one of our jobs, setting up payment gateways and finding excellent credit card processors for e-commerce cigar merchants, much easier. Due, in no small part to the recent change in regulatory attitude the software companies, banks and processors nationwide also have a better attitude now toward online cigar sales than they… Read More
Continue ReadingShopp plugin and high-risk payments
Shopp plugin and high-risk payments High-risk WordPress payment processing with Authorize.Net or NMI If you own a WordPress site and are looking to accept payments for vaporizers, cigars, FFL to FFL sales, or another common high-risk product type, Shopp may be a great fit. This is because the Shopp WordPress plug-in comes “out of the box compatible” with Authorize.Net and NMI. Both of these gateways, when set up correctly and powered by an appropriate high-risk friendly merchant account on the back end, are among our favorite high-risk friendly payment gateways. Shopp makes one of our jobs, recommending high-risk merchant accounts to you that are Shopp compatible, easy. Contact us below for a… Read More
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