MasterCard battles e-payment glitches

Incompatible payments from e-commerce sites and from mobile devices can leave small businesses with bookkeeping nightmares of goods and services delivered, but no payments in the bank.

Now, thanks to “Simplify Commerce,” a new offering from Purchase-based MasterCard Worldwide, when “the check is in the email,” it”™s also quickly available for deposit.

MasterCard claims ease of use and response “regardless of payment brand, in a matter of minutes.”

The “payment acceptance” portion of small business websites ”“ whether the sites of merchants or developers ”“ has proven problematic, MasterCard said: “Merchants, especially those managing smaller businesses, do not always have the resources readily available to help them set up the payments acceptance portion of their sites.”

“As a technology company with a strong history of payments experience, MasterCard is always looking for ways to empower merchants to grow their businesses,” said Garry Lyons, chief innovation officer for MasterCard. “By offering straightforward integration tools to developers and streamlining the process for businesses to get a merchant account, Simplify Commerce makes it easy for merchants to deliver online and mobile payments experiences to their customers.”

To make it easier for developers who work with merchants, Simplify Commerce is also offering so-called “application programming interfaces” and “software development kits” in a variety of programming languages including Ruby, PHP, Python and Java. Mobile software kits for iOS and Android are also available. Technical support is accessible at www.simplify.com.