Author: Maria Sparagis

Maria Sparagis is President of DirectPayNet, where she's spent over 20 years helping businesses scale to six-, seven-, and eight-figure revenue through optimized payment processing. She works hands-on with business owners to solve merchant account challenges, reduce processing costs, and implement payment strategies that support real growth. Maria is a regular speaker at fintech conferences and writes about practical approaches that help businesses break through revenue plateaus.

Expansion Part 2: Strategies for Maximizing Revenue When Expanding into New Markets

Business expansion into new markets is more than allowing your site to accept payments. We covered that in part one. To sum it up, you can add Dynamic Currency Conversion (DDC), open a Multi-Currency Merchant Account, or incorporate in the region. Now that you’ve prepped your store, how can you be sure of customer interest? And if customers […]

Startups are risky. Here’s how you can maximize your chances of getting a merchant account for one.

Startups are inherently high risk, which means getting a merchant account as a new small business owner is going to be a challenge. It can seem like a perpetual cycle. You need payment processing history and past business experience to get approved for a merchant account. But how can you get the experience without being approved? Don’t fret—there’s a way to break this cycle. And there’s […]

Interchange fees could be changing. So, which is better for merchants: debit card or credit card processing?

The fast and easy answer is that debit cards cost less for merchants than credit cards. But that answer doesn’t include card type popularity or preference by consumers. That could be changing too, though, based on support for interchange fee adjustments for debit card use by the Justice Department. Understanding Interchange Fees To understand the importance of the proposed change to interchange fees regarding debit card purchases, […]