A champion for merchants that sees the big picture

Ted Fuller, President of FullPayment, formerly Central Payments Financial Group, believes fraud today has become an epidemic. "Fraud has increased over the last two years," he said. "If a small business incurs a breach of any kind, 75 percent of the customers will never go back to that store. Sales offices that are not offering security and fraud management to customers are really doing a disservice to the general public."

FullPayment is a payment processing company dedicated to offering cutting-edge fraud prevention solutions to its customers with three layers of protection: encryption, tokenization and First Data Corp.'s TransArmor data protection. Fuller said his company is well positioned for the U.S. adoption of Europay, MasterCard and Visa (EMV) chip cards, spurred by the card brands' Oct. 1, 2015, liability shift to non-EMV-compliant parties in the event of a data breach. The companies' terminals are both EMV and near field communication ready.

"EMV is very expensive for ISOs and obviously for the banks that have to issue all new cards," Fuller said. "It will greatly strengthen transaction security for card-present transactions, keeping business owners and consumers as a whole protected from fraud. It's been happening in Europe for many years and has worked there."

New ways to work, buy, sell, create

FullPayment prides itself on providing customized payment products tailored to each merchant's particular needs with round-the-clock tech support and superior customer service. "We feel that merchants that work with us get a partner instead of just a service provider," Fuller said. "We offer great service and we are there for our merchants every step of the way.

"Everyone in my office knows all of our merchants by name. I feel that small business owners today really just want somebody they can count on; they want to be able to get a hold of the person who set up their account."

FullPayment provides a mobile payment product designed to work on cell phones currently available. "No new cell phone is required," Fuller said. "You don't have to buy an additional mobile device to process payments on your phone; all you have to do is have a smart phone that is able to download applications." Cell phone payments can be entered manually through the phone or through a separate card reader that is inserted into the audio jack of the phone.

A strong future for e-commerce, mobile

FullPayment offers solutions for retail and restaurant merchants through a large selection of downloadable, customizable applications. "Our point of sale technology takes the place of a full time manager, allowing the business owner to do more of what they love and allows the point of sale to actually do the work, do the labor," Fuller said. "When you are talking about inventory, scheduling, loyalty, rewards, analytics, social media integration, email marketing, sales reports, as far as which employees and items are performing and what isn't performing, it helps."

The company also offers a virtual terminal product for professional corporations and card-not-present merchants. Fuller said businesses that offer "subscription like services or have payment plans can set up a campaign where they customize an auto-bill cycle to charge their customers over time. Our Payeezy Gateway evolves into an online payment solution for your website as well."

Fuller believes the future for FullPayment will be in the e-commerce and mobile payment space. "A huge amount of business owners are transitioning in some way to the Internet via mobile apps or websites and I don't think it is going to stop," he said. "I don't think it's a fad. I think it is here to stay. More and more people use their computers, cell phones and tablets to get through the day to purchase goods and services. It's not going to slow down. I believe it is only going to increase."

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