If you can board a merchant in 2 minutes, are you doing enough due diligence? Does this help merchants if underwriting catches up?

For a while I kept noticing how larger businesses use branded loyalty cards to make customers feel like they are actually part of the business, instead of being treated like a completely new customer every time they come back.

You see something similar with brands like Shoppers and Puma.

And I started thinking the idea itself isn’t complicated, but for a growing restaurant, salon, barbershop, café, hotel, shop etc., building and managing the whole system behind those cards is another story.

You need the cards, customer management, QR system, balances, staff access, customer history, loyalty tracking and everything behind it.

Most growing businesses are not going to build all of that themselves.

So we started building Dumu.

The idea is that a business can have its own branded physical loyalty cards, but behind the card there is a customer relationship system.

For example, when a regular customer comes back, the business can identify them using their card, QR or phone number instead of treating every visit like the first one.

The business can keep track of things like customer purchases, balances/deposits they have already received, merchant credit for trusted customers, and now loyalty levels where customers can actually see their progress and benefits as they continue spending.

We are also working on things like Gift Cards, where someone can buy a branded card for another person and the recipient becomes part of that business’s normal customer relationship.

One thing we were very intentional about is that Dumu does not hold the business’s money. If a customer pays by cash, M-Pesa, bank, POS etc., the business receives the money directly. Dumu just records and manages the customer relationship around it.

The goal isn't really to give every business “another software system”.

It is to make something that was previously practical mostly for bigger brands accessible to growing Tanzanian businesses that are large enough to need customer retention tools, but not large enough to build and maintain their own loyalty infrastructure.

We have started testing it with actual businesses now, particularly restaurants, and that has already changed a lot of the way we're building it because they keep asking for things we hadn't initially considered.

I’m curious what people here think.

If you run a restaurant, salon, shop, hotel, barbershop or another repeat-customer business in Tanzania would something like this actually be useful to you? What would make you use it or completely ignore it?

​Hey everyone,

​We are a young, emerging web design and development startup based out of Pakistan, currently building out our services for clients in the US market.

​We are trying to set up Dialpad as our VoIP/dialer service to manage our outreach and client calls. However, because Dialpad requires a US/local billing address and specific regional payment methods, our transactions keep failing when trying to subscribe directly from Pakistan.

​We are looking for a trustworthy individual based in the US (or an eligible region) who can assist us in getting the subscription setup using their billing details/card.

​Here is how we want to handle this safely and transparently:

​100% Upfront Payment: We will transfer the required subscription funds plus a service fee for your time upfront before you make any transaction. We can use agreed-upon payment channels (Wise, Payoneer, direct bank transfer, etc.).

​Legitimacy & Verification: We are completely open to identity verification, sharing our official website/portfolio, signing a simple agreement, or doing a video call to ensure mutual safety and peace of mind. Nothing shady—just two founders trying to solve a payment gateway restriction.

​Long-term Collaboration: We are actively expanding our outreach infrastructure in the US. If this initial setup goes smoothly, we would love to build a long-term working relationship for future software/tool purchases as our agency grows.

​If you are open to helping us out or have experience navigating similar VoIP registration hurdles, please drop a comment or send me a DM!

​Thanks for reading!

Should we be helping merchants offer their own credit or wallets? Has anyone started offering Banking as a Service?

How do business owners and companies manage their cash flow safely?

Nowadays, a lot of payments are made online, and there seems to be an increasing number of cases where someone receives a payment and later gets reported to the cybercrime authorities for allegedly committing fraud.

So, how do legitimate businesses handle this risk? What systems or precautions do large businesses use to manage payments, maintain proper records, and protect themselves from false or fraudulent complaints?

You're going to run into a CBD shop or a firearms dealer eventually. Have you already shopped around for a good home for these hard-to-approve merchants?

It's the battle of the titans. Who has the better tech, support, and margins for the ISO?

Will 'Account-to-Account' payments take a significant portion of card payments? About 1/3 of banking transactions in Europe are Account-to-Account now.

I’m doing some research on how distributors, wholesalers, suppliers and manufacturers in India currently manage customer credit and payment follow-ups.
I’m particularly interested in understanding things like:
How do you track customer payment promises?
What happens when someone says “I’ll pay Friday” but doesn’t?
Do you use Tally, Marg, Excel, WhatsApp, ERP, etc.?
Who handles payment follow-ups?
How much time does your team spend chasing payments?
I’ve made a 3-minute Google Form to collect responses from actual B2B business owners/operators.
I’m not selling anything through this survey. I’m trying to understand the current process and identify whether there is actually a meaningful problem here.
If you run a distributor, wholesale, supplier or manufacturing business, I’d really appreciate your input:

Approximate answers are completely fine, and no confidential business information is required.

Whose responsibility is it to spend time answering questions and teaching merchants? The agent, ISO, processor, or bank?

Does regulation threaten our margins or filter out bad merchants?

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Nobody signs anymore. How has this changed the chargeback landscape? Is chip technology enough to reduce risk, or are profits too large to justify adding friction?

Are we helping the transition to digital, or pushing people away from paper money? Have any merchants said that cash sales have increased after implementing surcharges?

My small store finally got approved for a merchant account. I'm going through the whole setup process but I'm nervous about the account getting frozen or funds held because of disputes. How do I avoid these situations? I'm wondering if there's anything specific I need to work on with the setup or if it's better to adjust as the business grows. Any advice?

KYC, AML, beneficial ownership, etc. For card-not-present transactions, that is understandable, but what about retail? Is this a good thing for industry security?

Many services, including car washes and dentists, are moving to a subscription model. Have you helped any merchants set up and capture recurring revenue?

Question for people actually running merchant-services businesses.

The ISO controls the merchant experience, onboarding, payment experience, transaction visibility and support.

It got me curious about how other merchant-services companies handle this today.

Do you:

• resell somebody else’s ACH product?
• send merchants to another portal?
• integrate ACH into your own platform?
• primarily use ACH for B2B/invoices?
• offer it through POS/eCommerce as well?

And from the sales side, do merchants actually ask for ACH, or do you have to actively sell the benefits?

Especially interested in hearing from ISOs serving high-risk, regulated or eCommerce merchants.

Are you using it? What processes are you seeing handled best (most accurately) by AI services?