Mine Your Own Business

More on Business and the CARD Act

We did a posting on March 11th on some new legislation that had recently passed, the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act. The posting described how the act had important new protections for individuals but did not apply to small businesses. You can  read the whole posting at Business and the CARD Act. Now comes a followup article from the Wall Street Journal that describes how a point made near the end of the original article has indeed come true. Some card issuers are extending some of the same protections voluntarily  to small business credit cards.

You can check out the article to see if your credit card issuer has taken this step and if not, it might be a reason to switch. The article makes some points that since this is voluntary, it may be temporary or the card issuers might raise prices in order to compensate for not being able to raise prices later. A spokeswoman for the National Small Business Association states that specific legislation for small businesses would be preferred. Read the whole article for all the details on something that could have a big impact on your business.

Borrower Beware

Sure, the normal phrase is buyer beware, but in the current credit crunch and the troubles of CIT Group the phrase borrower beware is important for small businesses. Here's an interesting article that stresses that any small business who sometimes needs to borrow some money needs to have a back up plan. While most banks are being very cautious on loaning right now, the article states that credit unions might be a good source and provides a number of links to other lending sources.

Has your small business experienced any problems with credit or have you managed to escape the credit crunch so far?

New proposed legislation on interchange fees

A new measure called the Credit Card Fair Fee Act has recently been proposed as legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives. The measure would address the interchange fee that businesses pay banks for credit card-related purchases. This comes on the heels of the major credit card reform bill passed by Congress last month, and needless to say the banks have some objections.

Store owners and retailers have commented for some time that banks collude to set fee structures thus stopping them from negotiating lower rates. The banks say not so and that store owners and retailers can negotiate lower rates. For further background and to read both sides of the issues you can read the article here.

Credit Card Warning

BusinessWeek had an informative article recently on some new policies that credit-card processors are beginning to implement due to the recession and increasing business bankruptcies. Some credit-card companies have begun to demand that business owners have a cash reserve with the processors in order to satisfy any requests for customer refunds in the event a merchant has gone out of business. The problem is that many processing agreements grant credit-card companies some interesting ways to accumulate the reserve without notifying the merchant.

The article provides much more detail and some past history and examples, so reading the whole article might be a good idea to make sure your small business is not at risk.

A Really Useful Site

Every so often we find something really useful to pass along to you and today's one of those days.  The site is called "Biz Tool Kit", a service of the James J. Hill Reference Library.  According to their web site, "BizToolkit puts the best online information resources at your fingertips including downloadable business plans, HR forms, financial calculators, industry research reports, plus expert Live Help."

There is a "Pro" version of the site ($7.95 per month) but the free site has more than enough information to keep you busy for a long time.

The downloadable forms section and the Sales and Business Development Resources section alone make this site a real goldmine for any small business.

Sales Tools by JustSell.com is especially interesting.  The sales download "201 Motivators" is a listing of thoughts and actions, people, books, movies, movie monologues, and audio with motivational themes.  For example, Al Pacino's pre-game talk to his football team from the movie "Any Given Sunday" is a classic.  Check it out on YouTube.  [Warning:  Explicit language including one use of the "F" word]

There's really just too much on this site to even scratch the surface here.  This is one site you really should bookmark and come back to again and again.  We've added it to "Useful Links".  Check it out and let us know what you think.