small business

Visa announced that its social media network dubbed as the Visa Business Network (www.VisaBusinessNetwork.com) has been significantly enhanced and now small business owners can easily interact with peers in a collaborative way allowing them to get personalized help on goals ranging from growing their customer base to managing their business.

On Monday the Chairman of Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke has addressed banks and regulators urging them to Monday to seek for the opportunities to provide credits to small businesses to let them create jobs. According to him small businesses can help to improve the situation with unemployment which lowered to 9.5% in June compared to 9.7% in May. However it is still difficult to get those loans due to conditions.  

eBay has expressed its concerns over the proposed legislation on additional taxation of the ecommerce merchants. Tod Cohen, Vice President for Government Relations and Deputy General Counsel at eBay Inc., made the following statement upon the introduction of legislation to expand sales tax collection on the Internet, H.R. 5660 by Congressman Bill Delahunt (D-MA).

Visa has tightened rules for small business merchants. Starting today July 1, 2010, small and medium size businesses who take credit card payments will be obliged to enroll into the credit card industry's Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance program.

The law to distribute waste and used laptops among small business owners is being promoted to the US Congress. Two US senators on Monday introduced their bill to help small businesses that want access to broadband services and new technologies.

The bill pushed by Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana is based on the recommendations from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's broadband plan, released in March.

VeriSign, Inc., the trusted provider of Internet infrastructure for the networked world, has entered into an alliance with MerchantCircle, the nation's largest social network of local business owners, to offer its 1.3 million members a service to build increased confidence with consumers by displaying the VeriSign Trusted™ Seal.

Capital One has announced the introduction of its new premium rewards credit card for small business owners. The Venture for Business Card enables the cardholders to earn double miles on every purchase with an opportunity to earn up to 15,000 bonus miles within the first three months.

In an official statement Capital One says that there are no limits on when, where or how double miles can be earned, no retailer specifications or spending categories, no separate rewards enrollment or re-enrollment requirements, and no limit on the number of miles cardholders can accumulate.

Yahoo beta advertising service that allowed small online publishers, such as individual bloggers, to sign up to carry ads sold and distributed by the company in exchange for a commission, will be terminated, the company announced this week.

Known as Yahoo Publisher Network Beta the service has been providing pay-per-click text ads that are contextually relevant to the Web pages of participating publishers in which they appear. It was launched back in 2005 and since that time it has remained with no upgrades from its initial stage.

According to US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation data, small businesses computer scam made up $25 million in the third quarter of 2009.

Online banking fraud involving the electronic transfer of funds has been increasing since 2007 and reached the volume of over $120 million in the third quarter of 2009, according to estimates presented Friday at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, by David Nelson, an examination specialist with the FDIC.

According to the recent researches carried by Vistaprint and Ad-ology small businesses will increase their marketing activities online in 2010. 

Results of the research showed that the owners of small businesses are going to stake more on social media (18%), online and search advertising. However the most preferable tactic will be e-mail marketing (26%). 19% of the responders told that e-mail marketing is more frequently used because of the recession, followed by social media. Other results are available below. 

 David Wei, CEO of Alibaba.com, the world's largest business to business online network, noted that the United States pays scanty attention to small businesses which on the contrary should be considered as big part of the economic recovery. He said that his company will help create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the US. 

“We come here (to the US) and want to create one million jobs, in particular to help accelerate exports outside the US," David Wei, CEO of Alibaba.com. 

 As a response to the criticism that America encourages high executive pays while the national economy is weakening Goldman Sachs Group Inc. along with Warren Buffet are launching a $500 million initiative to help boost small business growth in the United States.

The initiative titled "10,000 Small Businesses” includes a $200 million contribution to community colleges, universities and other institutions to give grants to small business owners to further their education.

PSCU Financial Services, the nation's largest credit union service organization serving more than 1,300 financial institutions nationwide, unveils an ongoing series of free educational white papers on the company’s site www.pscufs.com. The white papers have the purpose to help credit unions to attract new members and earn their loyalty. The document also include topics such as how to optimize and market mobile banking services, and how to build a database that will identify small business owners and their financial needs.

 On Sunday CIT Group, the largest factoring company that finances small and medium size businesses, filed for bankruptcy protection which is viewed by most analysts as a threat to most of its clients putting them in at the end of 2008.

This filing is one of the largest in the history of the US and it will affect 2,000 of retailers and their vendors but not the company's other operating subsidiaries. CIT expects to reduce its total debt by about $10 billion.

 As everyone of us waits for the economic recovery and stability to return to the United States there are still many challenges that are not only coming out of external circumstances independent of our nation but a great number of such obstacles on the way to recovery are being created inside. While small businesses in the US create over 50% of jobs in America there is financing for these companies and firms as banks and other money institutions refuse to provide credit.