Public speaking can be a lucrative gig. With this in mind, Bryan Caplovitz founded the company SpeakerMatch, which pairs organizations with emerging talent — speakers who are on their way up.

The GoPayment Blog recently chatted with Caplovitz about the public speaking industry and how mobile payments play a vital role in it.

GoPayment: What is SpeakerMatch all about?

Caplovitz: SpeakerMatch is the world’s largest speakers bureau. We cater to the emerging speaker market, which we define as speakers who earn less than $1,500 per speech and/or do not make a full-time living through earned speaking fees.

I started up the company in 2002, and it has grown to thousands of users. Our website is the highest-trafficked speakers bureau website in the world, according to Alexa.com.

What are some of today’s hottest topics or forums?

Great question! While they follow the trends you might see on Google News, hot topics are not at all the most popular. By far, most meeting planners seek speakers who are motivational and inspirational in nature. They want a great entertainer. They are looking for someone who works for their particular audience.

Meeting planners can tell us all about the demographics of their audience (e.g., percentage male/female, job titles in attendance, age range) and the theme of their conference or event. They often have a suggested idea (e.g., “something about marketing” or “online security”). Just about everyone, however, mentions “motivational” and “inspirational” in their request.

Almost all planners will buy a great title and an energetic, entertaining speaker. They want someone who makes them look good.

What do many of today’s speakers talk about that wasn’t talked about five or 10 years ago?

I’d say social networking and entrepreneurship have seen the biggest growth in the past few years. The talks about social networking and how to use it for growing and building your business have skyrocketed. They did not exist at all 10 years ago.

Do many of your speakers use mobile payments?

Most speakers have something to sell on the back end of their talk, and a significant number sell at the back of the room. … I have heard anecdotally about many speakers processing mobile payments.

How can speakers simplify their jobs by using mobile payments?

Close to 100 percent of some speakers’ sales are made while they’re on the road. Processing payments on-site would eliminate the need to go back to the office (or their hotel room) to manually process credit card payments. They could save money by getting swiped-card rates. Perhaps the biggest benefit is that they could get money into their bank account sooner.

One of the most attractive features of using a mobile-payment system is the ability to issue electronic receipts. Instead of having to mess with pen and paper, you simply ask a customer for an email address, get a signature on the touchscreen on your mobile device (with a finger or a stylus), and send the receipt to his or her inbox.

As e-receipts become more popular, however, consumers are having to figure out efficient ways to manage them. Businesses like OneReceipt aim to help. For example, OneReceipt provides a free, user-friendly service that enables customers to store, access, and organize digital (and paper) receipts quickly and easily.

The GoPayment Blog recently sat down with OneReceipt co-founder Sam Fine to get his thoughts on the evolution of e-receipts.

GoPayment: What’s the concept behind your website?

Fine: OneReceipt is a faster and simpler way for people to organize their receipts and analyze their spending habits. OneReceipt works directly with Gmail, Google Apps, or Yahoo to understand e-receipts. Registration is quick and accounts get synced automatically.

For paper receipts, users need to take a picture with their phone and email it to their personal @onereceipt.com address. This data is presented to the user through an easily navigated interface. OneReceipt also provides tools like monthly spending reports and return alerts. The service acts as a post-purchase hub for consumers.

What kinds of problems do your services solve for consumers?

We give our users the ability to see all of their purchases in a single location — regardless of whether the purchase is completed online or in-store. With the direction of payments in general moving toward the digital sphere, we found the pain in finding e-receipts in our in-boxes. On top of that, paper receipts aren’t disappearing.

Will digital receipts eventually replace paper receipts?

We think the paper receipt will eventually disappear. But, for now, we will see a steady rise in e-receipts from bricks-and-mortar retailers. As more retailers adopt e-receipts, customers will become more accustomed to them, and this will make the switch to e-receipts [happen] faster.

Once upon a time, many charities in the United States were limited in accepting donations at fundraising events: They could only collect money from people who carried cash or their checkbooks with them. Today, mobile payments enable donors to contribute on-the-spot using their credit cards.

Here are four charitable organizations that have thrived with the support of mobile payments.

1. Vitamin Angels — This group distributes vitamins and similar nutrients to kids in developing countries worldwide. Over the past three years, Vitamin Angels has provided more than 100 million supplements to children in 40 nations. The group accepts mobile payments at charity events such as golf tournaments; the technology allows volunteers to process credit card payments instantly via smartphone or tablet rather than recording donor payment information and completing the transactions at a later time.

2. B.I.C. Bands — This charitable business’s mission is to assist those in need who are unable to help themselves. Founder Sandy Pearson donates a portion of her revenues to various charities, including Athletes Serving Athletes and Cookies for Kids’ Cancer. B.I.C. (“Because I Can”) Bands are washable, non-slip headbands that women can wear while exercising. Pearson says she loves GoPayment because it puts her on a level playing field with larger businesses without her going through the hassle of setting up a full-blown merchant account.

3.  Greater Atlanta Pentecostals Church — This church in Coweta County, Ga., has expanded its fund-raising efforts using GoPayment. Pastor Mark Herrington says that he uses mobile payments frequently when people want to donate to the church. Herrington says that GoPayment allows him to collect donations when he visits housebound individuals or when he’s just out in public. He calls the service convenient and easy to use.

4. Girl Scouts of America — Many troops that sell Girl Scout Cookies have embraced mobile payments as a simple solution to accepting credit cards. The scouts can process credit card transactions door-to-door, at the cookie stands they set up outside supermarkets, and at other sales events. As a result, Girl Scout troops from California to North Carolina have reported increases in cookie sales after adopting mobile payments.

Mobile payments can help nonprofit groups and charitable businesses of all kinds. Will yours be next?

In many countries, small businesses must adhere to strict rules and regulations that affect everything, from how much they can charge for a product or service to what types of goods they may sell. But in the United States, small businesses generally have more freedom to run their enterprises how they see fit.

However, just because you’re allowed to do something doesn’t mean that you should do it. This includes levying surcharges on credit card purchases.

Why Surcharges May Be a Bad Idea

Just because a small business can legally charge an extra 2 or 3 percent on a given transaction doesn’t necessarily make the practice a viable long-term strategy.

For example, today’s consumers are savvier than ever before: They know that, if they want to avoid credit card surcharges, they can probably find a merchant who doesn’t levy them. Therefore, businesses that tack on these fees may put themselves at a competitive disadvantage.

What’s more, 10 U.S. states have laws on the books that bar merchants from charging more for credit card purchases than those paid for with cash or checks.

However, the practice is legal elsewhere. A group of businesses recently filed a class-action lawsuit against Visa and MasterCard, because their merchant agreements prohibited them from passing credit card processing fees on to their customers. In July 2012, they reached an $8.55 billion settlement that included the right to assess surcharges on customers who pay with plastic.

If You Insist on Levying Fees

Some small merchants may experiment with credit card surcharges in an effort to offset the costs related to processing the cards.

One way to handle this is to couch your policy as a “discount” for customers who write checks or pay cash. This plan may lend itself well to industries that deal with large transactions, such as commercial contracting, home improvement, or consulting services.

Other small businesses may want to consider the sage advice that the most important actions are often the ones not taken. Choosing to avoid passing credit card surcharges on to customers may better support your operation in the long run.

Mobile payments have come a long way … but where, exactly, are they going?

That was a big topic of discussion at the Spring 2013 Mobile Payments Conference, which was held April 10 and 11 at the Helen Mills Event Space & Theater in New York City. The biannual event brought together more than 150 executives to talk about the latest developments in the mobile-payment industry.

Here are five trends to watch, according to the experts who spoke at the conference.

1. “Geo-fencing” is on the rise. The term refers to erecting a virtual fence around a geographic area and targeting customers electronically within that area. Locaid and Alliance Data Retail Services detailed their successful pilot geo-fencing retail promotion during the 2012 holiday season. Customers who opted in to the program received a text message when they were at or near Easton Town Center, a mall in Columbus, Ohio. If they used a particular credit card to make a purchase, they were entered to win a $5,000 shopping spree. Participating cardholders spent an average of 24 percent more in a shopping trip triggered by a text message than the average cardholder.

2. Consumers aren’t yet confident with mobile payments. Joe Cincotta, who founded Pixolut in Australia, observed that consumers have yet to widely embrace mobile payments, even though 79 percent are using smartphones while shopping in stores. Cincotta thinks that these consumers still haven’t been sold on the benefits of mobile payments and, to solve this problem, providers need to leverage the confidence consumers already have in corporate brands. He predicts steady growth in mobile payments for the next two to four years — and then fast acceleration.

3. Mobile wallets are secure. So said David Schropfer, a founding partner of mobile-payment consultancy Luciano Group. In fact, Schropfer believes that mobile wallets are more secure than many of the payment options currently offered in the marketplace. He points out that, as long as customers know their mobile wallet will be accepted by their favorite retailers, they really don’t care which technology they use.

4. It’s the consumers, stupid. In the past, many mobile-payment systems focused more on features and perks than on consumer needs. But Tim Attinger, an executive for prepaid payment-option provider Blackhawk Network, said that today these systems are shifting their energy toward tying goods and services to customers. Attinger also notes that many of these mobile-payment systems are moving from plastic to virtual prepaid cards.

5. Mobile payments meet loyalty programs. Expect to see more pairings of mobile-payment systems and loyalty programs in the near future. Jim Garrett, CEO of Snapfinger, an online portal for placing restaurant takeout orders, said that consumers don’t distinguish between ordering, payment, and loyalty programs. Any company that can combine all three components, Garrett says, will be able to provide “a fully integrated experience” that’s attractive to consumers.

About one-third of all small business failures can be traced back to employee theft and other worker crimes, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. As you might expect, retailers are particularly vulnerable, primarily because of the relatively short-term or part-time tenures of many clerks and cashiers.

How vulnerable? In 2011, the industry lost more than $35.3 billion to theft, 44.2 percent of which was attributed to inside jobs by employees. Although that was a slightly lower percentage than in the previous 12 months, it was substantially more than the losses related to shoplifting and organized crime (about 36 percent of total retail shrinkage) or administrative errors (12 percent), a National Retail Security Survey shows.

How can a small retailer reduce its exposure?

First, an owner or hiring manager can implement numerous measures to avoid hiring a risky employee in the first place and to build awareness about this problem among existing staff. Here are the top eight pre-employment techniques, as ranked by the national survey referenced above:

• Criminal conviction checks
• Multiple interviews
• Verification of past employment history
• Personal reference checks
• Drug screening
• Driving history checks
• Credit checks
• Education verification

There are also some very practical steps that retail store owners and managers can take to cut down on losses related to inside jobs. These solutions don’t necessarily require intrusive product tags and sensors that alert you when an item leaves the premises. In fact, they involve features you may already have in your Intuit POS system but haven’t put to use.

Here are two specific ideas:

1. Get on top of inventory. It is difficult to prevent losses if your company can’t properly account for how many items are on store shelves or in storage closets and warehouses. Investing in a POS system that has integrated inventory capabilities helps you track what’s coming in and out of the store, without requiring someone to spend time physically counting it. That way, you’ll be alerted if something goes missing.

2. Keep better tabs on employee hours. Another practice to consider is using your POS system to correlate employee hours with specific sales trends. If items disappear during a certain shift but weren’t rung up as a transaction, the store owner can dig into what happened.

“Most small retailers don’t know it, but they can actually use Intuit POS to map employee hours to sales — by day, by the week, even by the hour,” said Erik Roodsari, product manager for Intuit POS. “If they’re doing regular inventory, they may be able to spot spikes in shrinkage and map that to their employee activity. One retailer did this to quietly confirm her suspicions and ultimately prosecute the employee she fired.”

Mobile-payment technology is starting to change how — and where — people do business. One arena in which services like GoPayment are making an impact is trade shows, conferences, and large meetings.

The GoPayment Blog recently spoke with Corbin Ball, a global tech consultant and meetings expert, about what role mobile payments play in these events.

GoPayment: Technologically speaking, how different are meetings and conferences today compared with those that took place 10 or 15 years ago?

Ball: The onsite meeting until recently was the “black hole” of event data management. We had technology to assist us before and after the meetings, but no good tools for planners, exhibitors, and attendees to access while walking around an event.

Then mobile technology and mobile social media started taking hold. We still are in the process of this adoption. Meetings will likely change more due to [these] technologies in the next five years than they have in the last 15.

Now almost everyone is carrying around a powerful computer in their pockets, which opens the door for increased interactivity, more attendee input, and a vast array of tools to make the onsite process easier at meetings. [These tools include] mobile interactive conference/exhibition guides, wayfinding, contact exchange, polling, surveys, customized agendas, group or group-segment alerts, e-ticketing/access control, micro payments, paperless conference binders, and much, much more.

Do you see many meeting organizers and/or trade show vendors using mobile payments at events?

It depends on the show. Public shows with vendors with lots of onsite sales are beginning to use mobile payments. But things are opening up for a whole new world of opportunities. Mobile wallets, passbooks, and more will change events — and society in general — in a significant way.

How have mobile payments changed the way that vendors at trade shows can do business?

Faster, simpler, more capable, and secure are good things. Decreasing the friction in the payment process will increase sales.

Beyond vendors, how else have you seen mobile payments used at meetings, conferences, or trade shows?

There are a number of point-of-sale needs, like registration, event bookstores, and tours/conference add-ons.

What’s your prediction for the use of mobile payments at trade shows and conferences in the future?

I think that mobile payments will become commonplace at conferences (and in society in general) in the next four to five years.

GoPayment has the power to simplify the way that small companies do business. But are you taking advantage of all that the mobile-payment service has to offer?

Here are five tips for getting the most out of GoPayment:

1. Use the credit card reader. Sometimes you may feel that it’s inconvenient to retrieve and plug in the card reader, so you type in the customer’s credit card number instead. That’s fine, but keep in mind that, when you key in credit card data, you lose a penny on every dollar the customer spends that would otherwise go into your pocket.

2. Leverage customer email addresses. Some companies pay good money to third parties for lists of email addresses. Yet every time you send an electronic receipt to a customer with GoPayment, you capture that customer’s email address — for free. Use these emails to send thank-you notes or to invite customers to join your mailing list.

3. Customize your e-receipts. Yes, your name or business name appears on your electronic receipts. But have you considered adding other information? GoPayment lets you personalize your e-receipt with your company’s web address, Facebook page, or Twitter handle (each with its own live link). You could also create a coupon that encourages customers to revisit your business.

4. Keep track of employee sales. If your employees handle mobile transactions, you can monitor their sales performance with GoPayment. Just take the time to set up multiple users on your GoPayment account, with one user for each employee who is conducting mobile payments. That way, you can see who your big sellers are and who might need a little assistance or encouragement.

5. Connect GoPayment to QuickBooks. If you use QuickBooks accounting software, sync your mobile payments with your bookkeeping files. This is easy to set up, and it saves you the hassle of having to manually key in mobile transactions.

Few things are more aggravating than being “taken for a ride” by a service provider. In a perfect world, you pay a fair price to a company in exchange for an equitable, reliable service. But, in reality, some companies try to bilk you for as much money as possible. Credit card service providers are notorious for doing the latter with all sorts of “hidden” fees and add-on charges.

Here are five signs that your provider may be taking advantage of you:

1. You pay a flat transaction fee. This means that every time you process a credit card, you fork over a predetermined amount of money. In other words, if you conduct three small transactions of $100 each, you pay your service provider more than when you accept a single $300 payment. That doesn’t seem fair, does it?
2. You’re getting charged just to receive a monthly statement. Basically, you’re paying a credit card processing company for the privilege of viewing a list of the transactions you make each month. Think about it: Do you pay extra just to view your electric, water, or cable bill?
3. You pay a penalty if you don’t do enough volume every month. Monthly minimums may force you to favor credit card transactions at the expense of your customers who want to pay with cash or a check. Why should you have to choose which customers to satisfy?
4. You pay a “payment gateway” fee. Ostensibly, this is the “toll” that the credit card processing company levies to allow you access to the virtual highway through which customer data passes. Is this appropriate, given that neither your internet nor you telephone service provider assess such fees?
5. You’re billed for equipment lease payments after the leasing period ends. That’s right — many providers continue to charge you for leased equipment if you fail to proactively cancel your contract by a specific deadline. Is there anything fair about that?

You don’t have to put up with providers like those. GoPayment does not charge any flat transaction fees, gateway fees, or statement fees. Customers do not have to pay monthly minimums or even sign a contract; they only pay a small percentage of each credit card transaction to use the service.

When you start a business, or even just apply for a bank loan or a mortgage, you need to gather various documents, records, and information before you can begin — let alone complete — the process. Dealing with all the paperwork can be a real hassle.

Applying for a GoPayment merchant account is nothing like that. In fact, there’s no paper involved! Here’s a short list of everything you need to sign up:

1. Smartphone or tablet computer — This is the device you’ll use to process credit card payments.
2. Wi-Fi connection or 3G (or better) cellular service — Secure transactions can pass over either of these networks.
   
3. GoPayment app — Download this free app onto your smartphone or tablet from the Google Play Store (for Android devices) or the Apple App Store (for iOS devices).
   
4. Email address — Any address, even one from a free email account (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.), will suffice. Your email address serves as your username when logging into your GoPayment account.
5. Password — When you set up a GoPayment account, your password must contain at least seven characters, including one number and one capital letter.
6. Physical and/or business address — GoPayment needs to know where to send your free credit card reader, which plugs into the USB port of your mobile device so that you can swipe customer credit cards.
7. The name you want on your GoPayment electronic receipts — This can be your name or the name of your business, whichever you prefer.
8. Business category — GoPayment needs to know whether your business is a sole proprietorship, LLC, corporation, or other type of company.
9. Type of business — You will be prompted to choose from a drop-down menu, which includes retail, professional services, and additional business types (including “other”).
10. A social security number (and perhaps a tax ID number) — The last four digits of your social security number should be entered for verification purposes. If your business has a federal tax ID number, you’ll need to enter that as well.
11. Mobile phone number — This is how GoPayment will contact you if a representative needs to speak with you directly.
12. Card reader — This will be sent to you within seven days of account signup (see #6). But you may begin processing credit card payments manually right after you finish the signup process.

That’s all! No contracts to sign. No expensive equipment to rent or install. No cumbersome cables or connectors required. Setting up a merchant account with GoPayment takes only about as long as … well, reading this post.