Ironically, the real protagonist in that story was presented as the small merchant.

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But the truth is, for the small merchant, the benefits of a debit transaction outweigh those of a credit card or check.

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That means less money going into the small merchant's cash register.

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"We need to make sure that we strike that right balance between driving value to the consumer and the merchant on small-ticket" purchases, Mr. Sheedy said.

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Zaad, a mobile-money service, allows users to pay for goods by texting small amounts of money to a merchant's account, and is proving popular in Mogadishu.

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This is when hackers set up hundreds of fake merchant accounts to simultaneously withdraw small sums of money from a single account--no one knows it has happened until it's over.

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It offers a small, square device gratis, and a merchant can use it to run credit and debit card charges.

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Grail Partners, a merchant bank that advised Munder, will take a small stake.

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The card networks had offered those merchant discounts to encourage greater use of debit cards for small transactions.

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The 2011 MerchantCircle Merchant Confidence Index Survey of 8, 500 U.S. small- and medium-sized businesses showed that merchants are using location-based services more for marketing.

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