Are you a small business technology geek? If not yet, you definitely have to talk to Ramon Ray – the most enthusiastic technology evangelist and a great source of knowledge about technologies for small businesses. He is also a funny interlocutor. We talked about the culture of running small business in the US and the rest of the world, about role of technology in small businesses and social media. Hope you enjoy reading this interview as much as I enjoyed interviewing Ramon.
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Everybody (and their uncle) knows about the Facebook Timeline. On March 30th the brand profiles changed their look. Some companies embraced the Timeline earlier, which made the design job a real challenge: how to do something quite original and stay within the borders of company’s policy?
PayLane’s TimeLine – time-consuming but rewarding
We wanted something special for the PayLane’s Facebook cover. Naturally, it had to be connected with our business: credit cards, online payments… But we wanted the cover to convey more than that. We wanted to show that we are a group of people with passion for payments.
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One by one we’re adding new payment options to PayLane services. Now our offer has expanded with sofortbanking – one of the most popular payment methods in Germany.
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Have you ever been asked for an ID scan or any other identity proof when making a payment with a credit card online? If not, then this question may seem quite strange to you. After all, paying with credit cards is meant to be quick and easy.
It turns out that many people who experience such additional verification are pretty surprised and suspicious. It’s not what they’re used to, they already provided the CVV number, so why are they supposed to send somebody (even if its a bank) their account statements, passports, driving licences or anything like that.
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CVV codes described in the previous part aren’t the only way to make your transactions secure. There are forms of security, which are based on the payer’s localization. However, you may also come across simpler solutions, where only entered data is verified.
An example of that could be AVS – its mechanism compares your address info given in the shopping order with details of the card holder. Depending on the degree and type of eventual errors, AVS returns an appropriate error code, which are the base of estimating the probability of a fraud. Contrary to appearances, it is not inconvenient to clients – the system can tell the difference between a real scam and a situation when a buyer made a spelling mistake.
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If some of you were wondering what a graphic designer actually does at a payment processing company, now is the time to lift the shroud of mystery. Designing a 404/500 error page seems rather trivial (especially in comparison to infographics), but it proved an interesting task.
You could have seen the finished designs in one of the previous posts. I’d like to show you some of the designs that could have been… And why they didn’t make it. In other words: welcome to my sketchbook.
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Most of us, freelancers, have a similar opinion hardcoded in our heads – work for yourself, gain experience and knowledge from any source in our own time. But I need to change your thinking. I’ve just started working for PayLane as a developer and just after three short weeks I totally changed my mind.
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Whenever we read any news about mobile payments, it seems like it’s always about the same things: smart phones, NFC, Square, Google Wallet and so on. If you have a similar impression, then here’s something refreshing: Moneta – a payment scheme that doesn’t require NFC, attaching anything to your cell phone or installing any apps. Actually, you don’t even need a smart phone – any cell phone will do just fine!
So how does it work? What’s the technology behind Moneta? It’s actually as simple as a phone call. And I mean it literally – data is transmitted over a voice connection!
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Recently, the owners of the Chase Sapphire Credit Cards (signed by Visa) might have been surprised, finding their new card looking slightly different than they were used to. The 16-digit number, the expiration date and Visa logo were moved to the other side, leaving just the name of the cardholder and the bank on the front.
Redesign is not an easy thing to do. If done carelessly, it may prove hazardous. One may recollect a recent redesign of the Pepsi logo – not received well by the general public. Some concepts and designs are so deeply rooted in people’s minds that even a slight change seems odd and takes quite a long time to get used to. The truth is that there should be a really good reason behind the redesign. It can be done to refresh the brand or to appeal to new markets. It may be done to differentiate oneself from the competition, to enhance usability… Or to stress a unique feature of a new product.
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We’ve all left 2011 behind. This was a good year for Paylaners. Hope it was for you too.
Along with 2012 and New Year’s resolutions came a nice surprise – a few free days extra. Heritage from 2011. Naturally, I wanted to use them.
Took a globe, closed my eyes and pointed a random holiday destination. Wish me luck!
Well, not really, I just googled. Thailand? Why not?
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