In the modern cashless economy, businesses have to be equipped with efficient and secure electronic payments systems. This has increased the significance of transaction processing products and services and an established leader in this industry is Flagship Merchant Services. The company has a wide range of payment processing products and services for businesses which include credit card processing machines, merchant accounts as well as merchant credit cards.

The online division of Flagship Merchant Services is cardservicesales.com and through its website, the company offers a variety of reliable and affordable payment processing solutions to its clients. Among the most important of these are setting up of merchant accounts of different types as well as credit card related services like setting up of new credit card machines as well as reprogramming of existing machines.

Flagship Merchant Services further offers transaction processing services catered to particular businesses; for instance it offers the TeleCheck Check Guarantee Program for retail merchants and a comprehensive e-commerce package for online businesses. Moreover cardservices.com has some of the lowest fees in the industry and a host of free services like merchant account set up, credit card machine reprogramming, round the clock customer support and online reporting among others

In a virtual world where travel agents are in fierce competition to sell the best deals to customers, it often becomes difficult to keep track of who is offering what. Lowfares.com is a single, easily navigable site which not only provides access to discount travel prices but more importantly lets you shop around for the best deal on airline tickets, cheap hotels or rental options.

The main advantage of using Lowfares.com is that the website allows you to compare for yourself travel deals from a wide range of tour operators and all from a single site. If you are looking for cheap flights or cheap hotels, you need not jump from one travel site to another but simply type in your flight or hotel requirements and Lowfares.com will come up with relevant deals offered by the most reputed tour operators.

Moreover the easy-to-use comparison table allows you to compare travel deals across a wide spectrum of providers. You can compare the costs of airline tickets, cheap hotel reservations as well as rental packages offered by several well-known travel agents so that you can book a deal best suited to your resources and requirements. Finally Lowfares.com also offers attractive discounts on combined bookings of flights and hotels so that you can save as much as $200 if you make simultaneous airlines and hotel reservations.

US retailers had better be prepared this holiday season for the slowest sales growth in the last six years, if the results of a survey conducted by the National Retail Federation are to be believed.

A study conducted by the Federation, the largest retail industry group of the country, revealed that sales in coming November and December are expected to grow by 2.2 percent to touch $470.4 billion this year. The estimates exclude sales of fuel and motor vehicles. The expected sales figures mark the lowest rate of growth since the year 2002 when sales grew at 1.3 percent.

Industry analysts believe that continuing financial pressures as well as stagnant wages have greatly reduced the spending power of the average consumers. They would thus respond by restricting their holiday shopping budget and turning away from discretionary items. The market meltdown last week which led to the collapse of major Wall Street firms has further dampened consumer confidence, already at a low due to depressed housing market, rising food and energy costs and increasing unemployment.

Analysts from the National Retail Federation further believe that the low sales trend is not expected improve before the second half of next year.

The historic $700 billion bail out plan for the US finance sector moved to the Capitol Hill where it will be debated by the country’s lawmakers before being passed and sent for the President’s approval.

Both the Bush administration as well as the Congressional leaders appeared to agree on the broad terms of the bail out package including strict oversight of the program as well as greater relief for homeowners threatened by foreclosures. Even the two ends of the political spectrum seemed to recognize the urgency of the situation and agreed to shore up party support for the smooth passage of the bill.

However, the Bush administration and the Congress lawmakers remained divided over certain features of the bail out plan including the enormous burden it would impose on the nation’s taxpayers as well as on demands of some lawmakers that the pay of top executives of those firms seeking help be limited. The government and Congress also clashed over the details of a proposal that sought to grant bankruptcy judges a new authority to reduce mortgage payments of those homeowners facing foreclosure.

Markets too seemed demoralised by all the wrangling in Washington and the Dow Jones Industrial Average reacted by tanking over 372 points.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced shortly after Monday midnight that it would revise the rules it had issued three days before to restrict short selling. The SEC has added another 96 companies to its earlier list of US firms to be protected from short sellers and has given control of the updated list to exchanges. Among the newly included companies whose stocks would be protected are automaker General Motors, insurance group General Electric and the hedge fund, GLG Partners.

The move by the SEC follows appeals from an increasing number of US and UK companies to be provided protection against short selling after a similar safeguard was accorded to banks and finance companies last week. Many of the new companies requesting protection are from the real estate business as trade bodies fear that shares of property groups would be the next target of short sellers.

The intervention by federal regulators became necessary in the wake of last week’s market meltdown when many prominent banks came under assault by increased selling from short sellers. short sellers, typically take advantage of the falling prices by borrowing shares and then selling them in the hope of buying them back for less. Real estate companies have to depend on banks for finance and are thus exposed to risks of the money market besides being affected by issues like interest rate movements.

Japanese financial giants are snapping up banks and other finance firms in the aftermath of last week’s US market meltdown which has left many of the Wall Street titans collapsed or grasping for external support.

Japan’s biggest brokerage, Nomura Holdings, is reportedly taking over the Asian division of the failed US investment bank, Lehman Brothers for $525 million. In another instance of the growing clout of Asian finance companies in the Wall Street, Japan’s largest bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial has agreed to purchase 20% stake in Morgan Stanley for a whopping $8.5 billion.

This trend of Japanese banks buying into the US finance sector has led analysts to speculate that Goldman Sachs may also be contemplating a deal with its long-time associate Sumitomo Mitsui, which is Japan’s third largest bank. Both Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have been converted into commercial banks in an attempt to garner revenues from customer deposits which afford relatively lesser risk as compared to the credit market.

Japanese financial institutions have made a remarkable come back on the global finance scene where their emergence as principal players is a far cry from their shaky positions just a few years ago when they seemed perched on the edge of collapse.

Circuit City Stores officials announced on Monday that Philip J. Schoonover has agreed to step down as chairman, president and chief executive of the company in the wake of continuing losses over the past year.

Spokesperson of Circuit City Stores further revealed that the company board had elected Allen B. King as the chairman and had directed James A. Marcum to take over as the acting president as well as the chief executive.

Circuit City is a chain of retail stores based in Richmond, Virginia. Since the past one year, sales across its stores have been declining and the company incurred losses in four out of the last five quarters. This led to intense pressure on Schoonover who was primarily blamed for the company’s weakened returns. Added to these troubles were speculations of a takeover bid which further led to fall in the company’s stock values. However after the news of Mr. Schoonover’s exit became public, shares of Circuit city Stores climbed up by 8 percent.

Mr King who succeeds Mr. Schoonover as the Chief Executive of Circuit City declared that the immediate priority of the management will be to speed up the turnaround of the company. Mr King was formerly in the tobacco business and has been on the board of Circuit City since 2003.