{"id":1004,"date":"2016-05-27T06:35:55","date_gmt":"2016-05-27T12:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2016.calgary.wordcamp.org\/?p=1004"},"modified":"2016-06-15T08:59:14","modified_gmt":"2016-06-15T14:59:14","slug":"sponsor-profile-helcim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calgary.wordcamp.org\/2016\/sponsor-profile-helcim\/","title":{"rendered":"Sponsor Profile – Helcim"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Helcim<\/a><\/p>\n

Organizer John typing here. I’m going to be very frank. Payment processing is all very confusing to me. Or rather, was<\/em> very confusing to me. I suppose only because I had never really looked into how it all works before. But since I’m going to write a sponsor profile about Helcim<\/a>–one of our awesome sponsors, obvs–I figured I’d do a better job if I looked into it a little bit.<\/p>\n

Here’s what I, as a civilian, know. Someone hands me a machine into which I insert a credit or debit card. It asks me to confirm the amount I’m spending. I enter my PIN. Something magical happens and I get to walk away with merchandise even though I didn’t give anyone money! Amazing!<\/p>\n

But of course, I did give them money. But how??<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, there’s a company called a payment processor. There are lots that are that, actually, and Helcim is one of them. These companies give (or maybe rent or sell, I don’t know) machines (which are called payment gateways) to merchants who want to sell me stuff. They charge a monthly fee for the unit, though whether that’s for the unit, or for the unit to access a system I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t matter.\u00a0When I want to buy something using my plastic, the merchant hands me that machine that they got from the payment processor.<\/p>\n

After I’ve done my bit where I insert and acknowledge and PIN-punch, the payment processor takes the information I just entered and submits it to my bank or my credit card company. The bank or credit card company checks to see if I have the liquidity to manage a transaction of that size. They also carry out a number of anti-fraud checks. In this example, they know it’s me because I’m just buying a couple of pints or a pizza again. They then communicate back to the payment processor and then to the gateway\u00a0that all is copacetic.<\/p>\n

And then, somebody else gets involved, and they’re also called a payment processor, but they’re called back-end payment processors. They don’t have payment gateways like Helcim does; instead, they handle the settlement systems for companies like Helcim (which are called…wait for it… front-end payment processors).<\/p>\n

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, a small piece of the action is charged by the payment processor.<\/p>\n

Now THIS is where choosing a payment processor becomes important.<\/strong> Not only are you, as owner of Suzie Joe’s Pizza & Beer, paying the monthly fee for the payment gateway, but you’re also paying a percentage fee of your transactions for this money to magically end up in your account. It’s nifty, and certainly worth it for the almost-cashless society in which we now live. But you definitely want to know what you’re paying, and be able to rely on that.<\/p>\n

And here’s where Helcim becomes a great choice. I went to the website of several different payment processors.\u00a0On some, I couldn’t even find prices. Helcim has clear pricing right on their website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I also went and googled around\u00a0to see what people complain about when they’re complaining about their payment processor. Those complaints are primarily unexpected fees and locked-in contracts. \u00a0Helcim themselves point out in a handy video<\/a> some of the most common payment processor “tricks” and they say that they don’t play those games.<\/p>\n

Normally, I like to write kind of light and cheery sponsor profiles. But just because I didn’t even really understand their business very well, I figured this one deserved a different treatment. If you’re like me and really didn’t know what the heck a payment processor does and why you would care, hopefully you’ve come away with a bit more knowledge.<\/p>\n

Thanks for your sponsorship, Helcim!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Organizer John typing here. I’m going to be very frank. Payment processing is all very confusing to me. Or rather, was very confusing to me. I suppose only because I had never really looked into how it all works before. … Continue reading Sponsor Profile – Helcim<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5075971,"featured_media":373,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[834922],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sponsor-profile"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/calgary.wordcamp.org\/2016\/files\/2016\/03\/Helcim-Logo02.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7830y-gc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calgary.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calgary.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calgary.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calgary.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5075971"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calgary.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1004"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/calgary.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1005,"href":"https:\/\/calgary.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004\/revisions\/1005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calgary.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calgary.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calgary.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calgary.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}