Is a merchant account offshore legal

Is A Merchant Account Offshore Legal?

Traveling back from Europe the other, I exchanged business cards with the gentleman sitting next to me. He saw merchant account offshore on my card and said “Isn’t a merchant account offshore illegal or something?” Then one of the other passengers chirped in “Yeah, I hear that a merchant account offshore is a scam. A way for people to launder money or avoid paying taxes.” Both these comment about a merchant account offshore were incorrect, of course. Yet, the reasons for the false beliefs were totally understandable.

The term offshore merchant account has long had a bad rap. Years ago, accounts were set up with banks in small obscure island countries. Hence the term offshore merchant accounts meant the banks were literally offshore. Exotic island locations which few average people have ever seen became suspect. Were the rich people mysteriously squirreling away hoards of cash? Well, a lot has changed since the olden times. And a merchant account offshore no longer refers to some island location

These days, merchant accounts offshore are set up almost everywhere in the world. Switzerland, France, UK, Netherlands, Germany, UK, US, South America, Asia, Pacific Rim, Middle East. You name it. The leading banks in countries around the world avidly compete to establish merchant accounts offshore for companies doing business globally. In fact, world class international banks with recognizable names are now the most common place to establish a merchant account offshore. The term simply refers to an account established in a jurisdiction other than the company’s original country of domicile.

Almost every country in the world wants to profit as much as possible from the vast electronic financial universe in which we all live. Offering a merchant account offshore is just one of many services banks around the world use to attract business customers and their money. There’s no doubt establishing a merchant account offshore can have financial benefits for companies. Certain countries do offer more favorable business conditions than others. You can review those advantages with your business advisers. But laundering money and avoiding taxes is not the reason companies establish a merchant account offshore.

There are obvious advantages for most companies doing business globally to have a merchant account offshore. For example, savings on foreign currency exchange, reduced payment processing fees and redundancy in payment processing facilities to protect business operations are all sound business reasons to set up a merchant account offshore. In these modern days of global ecommerce, a merchant account offshore is no longer anything to hide. In fact, establishing a offshore merchant accounts may be one of the wisest business decisions a company can make.

Internet marketing strategy that works;

Internet Marketing Strategy That Works;

Why Erik Rides a Limo: His Internet Marketing Strategy

In 2003, Erik brought his first laptop home without a hint of what he exactly wanted to do, except to follow what others have been doing: chat online. He was sold to the idea of online dating, and believing that chatting online is a cheaper alternative than downing bottles of beer at the local pub, at exactly 9 AM, Eastern Standard Time, he hit off his first key: www…

The rest was history.

Today, Erik owns 120 websites and a vibrant company employing 12 people in a plush condominium he also calls «home». His online dating was a success, having found Jane, but he hit «jackpot» with online marketing. What turned out to be a pastime became a lucrative endeavor for a guy who was not computer savvy to start off with, and whose only concept of a mouse was that little pest chewing up his shoe lace.

Jason, also hit his keyboard in 2003, precisely with the same line of thought, but with a little twist: to charm an Asian. He has a leaning towards Asian women because his mother was half Taiwanese. However, when he got online, he found something he loved to do, so he ventured into online marketing, too.

Four years later today, Jason is still driving his old and weather-beaten pick-up truck, while Erik drives around town in a shiny limo. Did Erik hit the online lotto?

Of course, not. Erik merely uncovered a marketing truth, which Jason and his peers saw, but dismissed as something less relevant. They followed the trail where all others have gone, while Erik stayed and pondered on what was already there, until he found an
Internet Marketing Strategy that works!

Common mistake in marketing online is in believing that traffic is the end-all and be-all of online success. Nothing can be farther from the truth! Long queue of online visitors to your site is a good indication that you have struck the right formula in getting them there where you want them, but becoming popular is NOT the way to go. At some point it can help a lot, however, the litmus test on real online success is on being profitable (while remaining popular).

WORK ON YOUR CONVERSION.

Combine traffic competitiveness with high conversion results and it is game over — in your favor. Unless you learn how to convert as high as you invite traffic to view your site, you won’t rake in success like Erik did.

Conversion is leading your online visitors from point A (just viewing your site) to point B (deciding to make a purchase). The initial challenge is on how to get them over to your site, but the killer punch is on making them buy! This is the surest way to make money.

Erik shares these two easy-to-do steps to Internet Marketing for Online Business:

1.) BUILD TRAFFIC REGULARLY. Get more people to view your site; by law of numbers, more viewers = the greater is the possibility for online conversion. Building traffic however is not a spur of the moment activity. It should be a life-long (for as long as you want to build and develop your online business, that is) process. It should have a well-thought of plan — a master plan.

2.) CONVERT AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY. Present your website in such a way that leaving it becomes difficult. Enthrall your online visitors with your designs, but do not be carried away too much. No matter how attractive your graphics are, it’s content that can sustain your online viewers’ interest, which will make them pay you another visit.

Content however must not only be entertaining but persuasively interesting. It must drive home the point that it is to your viewers’ advantage if they follow your «calls to action».

Build trust. Your website should not «oversell» its message, as this gives rise to skepticism. Provoke interest by providing facts they can check out with other online sources.

Is your site easy to navigate? Nothing else can drive your online visitor away faster than not being able to accomplish a particular task on your site, because of navigational problems.

Track improvements on regular basis. You will only know how far you have gone if you compare yesterday’s performance to today’s gain. Adjust when necessary. Flexibility has its own power.

In the final analysis, unless you convert effectively, you cannot expect to create a lucrative source of income from online business. Traffic alone, though very helpful, cannot cut the chase from online obscurity to online success.

Best Internet Marketing Strategies proven by successful people who cracked their own online success, dictate that every factor should interplay harmoniously with one another, like strings of a guitar. To focus on traffic alone won’t help; in the same token, conversion can’t be helped without traffic.

That’s how Erik did it, which Jason had to learn, unless he loves to drive in his beat-up truck
a little longer.

Is glaswegian lost in translation

Is Glaswegian lost in translation?

Deals are said to have sunk when entrepreneurs from England or abroad were confronted with the patois synonymous with Rab C Nesbitt, the fictional string-vested Govan ne’erdowell. Jurga Zilinskiene, the Lithuanian boss of Today Translations, insists the move is no gimmick and there is a real need for staff capable of making “Weegie” understood from Vilnius to Vancouver. “We are aware that some of our foreign and UK clients can find the Glaswegian accent difficult to decipher,” states Zilinskiene in near perfect received pronunciation. “While it’s unusual for us to want someone to translate a dialect of English, there is a clear demand.” The experience of Zilinskiene’s clients is not new. As reported in The Sunday Times last week, newly published MI5 archive documents revealed that the thick Glaswegian accent of Mick McGahey, the former vice-president of the National Union of Mineworkers, proved indecipherable to the security service operatives who bugged his phone calls. Janey Godley, the award-winning comedian, is characteristically frank about the problems that come with speaking like an extra from River City rather than a BBC executive at White City. “I would love to say that people in my beautiful, cosmopolitan home city speak as clear as a bell but they don’t,” she says. “The accent is incredibly difficult, it’s very exclusive and not everybody gets it.” “I quickly learned to speak clearly,” she says. “I am proud of where I came from and under no circumstance did I change my accent to hide that — I changed it so people in New York and New Zealand could understand me.” The comic, who performed to sell-out crowds and rave reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe, said Glaswegians routinely face the sorts of snide comments that would be considered unacceptable if they were directed against other groups in society. She recalls how the late writer Clement Freud sneeringly demanded a translator after she appeared alongside him on Radio 4. “When I go down to England I don’t do any gags for the first six or seven minutes. I just talk to the audience and I speak slowly and that usually helps them get attuned to it.” He believes the Glasgow dialect is unfairly maligned. “I don’t think Glaswegian is any more difficult to understand than other regional accents, like those in Liverpool or the east end of London,” he says. According to linguists, the genesis of the Glasgow dialect has much to do with the fact that the city has always been a cultural melting pot. James Scobbie, professor of speech science at Edinburgh’s Queen Margaret University, said Glaswegian remains one of the UK’s most distinctive accents. “All Scottish accents are very different from others in the English-speaking world. We have an ‘r’ that is pronounced, while other accents are ‘r’-less,” he says. The historical lack of social mobility in the city accounts for the accent’s resilience. Dr Jennifer Smith, a senior lecturer in Glasgow University’s English language department, says the city’s pockets of deprivation, which rank among the worst in Europe, have prevented the accent’s dillution. “We know that Glasgow is statistically poorer and there are a lot of deprived areas, so within those areas there is a lot of non-mobility,” she says. “In that situation, you get dialects passed down and down through the generations.” Smith believes greater television exposure could help Britain tune in, understand and even love Glaswegian. “The Newcastle dialect sounds very different from standard English, but people don’t seem to have as much of a problem as they do with the Glasgow dialect. There are quite a lot of Geordie accents in the media. The more exposure you have to different dialects, the more you pick up on them.” But the idea of employing translators to decipher Glaswegians’ diction has angered city fathers. Alex Mosson, the former Lord Provost who worked alongside Connolly on the Clyde shipyards, says: “It’s a lot of tripe. I travelled the world as Lord Provost and nobody failed to understand me.” Back in the Gallowgate a grandmother bristles at the suggestion that non-Glaswegians should need an interpreter. “It’s a pure brass neck, so it is,” she says. “We can un’erstaund every word o’ EastEnders and Friends nae borra at aw, but they cannae get the gist of whit we talk like. It’s oot a order.” Read full article here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article6879460.ece

Deals are said to have sunk when entrepreneurs from England or abroad were confronted with the patois synonymous with Rab C Nesbitt, the fictional string-vested Govan ne’erdowell.

Jurga Zilinskiene, the Lithuanian boss of Today Translations, insists the move is no gimmick and there is a real need for staff capable of making “Weegie” understood from Vilnius to Vancouver.

“We are aware that some of our foreign and UK clients can find the Glaswegian accent difficult to decipher,” states Zilinskiene in near perfect received pronunciation. “While it’s unusual for us to want someone to translate a dialect of English, there is a clear demand.”

The experience of Zilinskiene’s clients is not new. As reported in The Sunday Times last week, newly published MI5 archive documents revealed that the thick Glaswegian accent of Mick McGahey, the former vice-president of the National Union of Mineworkers, proved indecipherable to the security service operatives who bugged his phone calls.

Janey Godley, the award-winning comedian, is characteristically frank about the problems that come with speaking like an extra from River City rather than a BBC executive at White City. “I would love to say that people in my beautiful, cosmopolitan home city speak as clear as a bell but they don’t,” she says. “The accent is incredibly difficult, it’s very exclusive and not everybody gets it.”

“I quickly learned to speak clearly,” she says. “I am proud of where I came from and under no circumstance did I change my accent to hide that — I changed it so people in New York and New Zealand could understand me.”

The comic, who performed to sell-out crowds and rave reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe, said Glaswegians routinely face the sorts of snide comments that would be considered unacceptable if they were directed against other groups in society. She recalls how the late writer Clement Freud sneeringly demanded a translator after she appeared alongside him on Radio 4.

“When I go down to England I don’t do any gags for the first six or seven minutes. I just talk to the audience and I speak slowly and that usually helps them get attuned to it.”

He believes the Glasgow dialect is unfairly maligned. “I don’t think Glaswegian is any more difficult to understand than other regional accents, like those in Liverpool or the east end of London,” he says.

According to linguists, the genesis of the Glasgow dialect has much to do with the fact that the city has always been a cultural melting pot.

James Scobbie, professor of speech science at Edinburgh’s Queen Margaret University, said Glaswegian remains one of the UK’s most distinctive accents. “All Scottish accents are very different from others in the English-speaking world. We have an ‘r’ that is pronounced, while other accents are ‘r’-less,” he says.

The historical lack of social mobility in the city accounts for the accent’s resilience. Dr Jennifer Smith, a senior lecturer in Glasgow University’s English language department, says the city’s pockets of deprivation, which rank among the worst in Europe, have prevented the accent’s dillution.

“We know that Glasgow is statistically poorer and there are a lot of deprived areas, so within those areas there is a lot of non-mobility,” she says. “In that situation, you get dialects passed down and down through the generations.”

Smith believes greater television exposure could help Britain tune in, understand and even love Glaswegian. “The Newcastle diale
ct sounds very different from standard English, but people don’t seem to have as much of a problem as they do with the Glasgow dialect. There are quite a lot of Geordie accents in the media. The more exposure you have to different dialects, the more you pick up on them.”

But the idea of employing translators to decipher Glaswegians’ diction has angered city fathers. Alex Mosson, the former Lord Provost who worked alongside Connolly on the Clyde shipyards, says: “It’s a lot of tripe. I travelled the world as Lord Provost and nobody failed to understand me.”

Back in the Gallowgate a grandmother bristles at the suggestion that non-Glaswegians should need an interpreter. “It’s a pure brass neck, so it is,” she says. “We can un’erstaund every word o’ EastEnders and Friends nae borra at aw, but they cannae get the gist of whit we talk like. It’s oot a order.”

Read full article here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article6879460.ece