Credit

A  number of retailers offer coupons and special offers online, but few actually know how effective the coupons are at driving business in their stores. Tracking click-through or redemption rates for coupons offered on websites other than those owned by the retailer can be difficult.

Thomas Jordan learned a lot about the costs associated with accepting credit cards when the point-of-sale terminal in his wife’s Santa Barbara, Calif., clothing store broke down.

Like many retailers, the expertise at Socorro is not on payments, so when Jordan called the store’s credit card processor to ask about getting a new machine and was told that he would have to pay $900 upfront for a new terminal or take out a four-year contract at $40 per month, “I got mad,” he says.

Retailers are slowly moving toward acceptance of mobile payments, but smaller merchants have often felt left out of the mix. Many processors who handle retail payment transactions charge extra fees on mobile transactions, pricing out smaller businesses that want to let customers pay for goods or services via a mobile device.

But an offering from McLean, Va.-based Sage Payment Solutions initially developed to handle such businesses as charitable organizations or medical service providers is now being directed at small retailers.

There was a story in The New York Times last month about a number of restaurants and cafes in Manhattan that are “saying no.” A bistro on the Lower East Side, known for its fries, says “no” to patrons requesting ketchup. At the Spotted Pig in the West Village customers can have their burger with or without Roquefort — but the wait service refuses to substitute a different cheese. And at Murray’s Bagels, folks have endless choices for bagel toppings — but there’s an ironclad no-toasting policy.