Dharma Blog

Featured Merchant: PlanetBox This month we're thrilled to feature local, family-owned and operated, health and sustainability-focused, rockstars of the lunchbox world Planetbox for three very special reasons: PlanetBox is an amazing company that produces beautiful, functional and completely sustainable lunch boxes. The boxes have a very smart design that helps [...]

BPA-Free Receipt Paper Contains BPS Thanks to an alert from one of our dear merchants, we have determined that the BPA free receipt paper that we worked to find and to offer contains bisphenol S (BPS). According to researchers at the State University of New York, BPS apparently has similar [...]

Visa, Mastercard Settle on 2005 Class Action Antitrust Lawsuit Great news: Visa and Mastercard recently announced a settlement to the 2005 class action antitrust lawsuit on behalf of 7 million retailers that accept credit and debit cards with their brands. As part of the proposed deal they have agreed to [...]

Smile! Dharma Featured Photo Contest As we mentioned before, we're absolutely thrilled with our new website (thanks again to the folks at Earthsite!).  We hope you're enjoying it too and welcome your comments to help improve it even more. We have one great idea already: we think a huge improvement [...]

New Fee from Visa: FANF Adjustments in the rates and fees that the Card Associations (Visa, MC, Discover & Amex) charge are made in October and April. Last fall debit fees were radically reduced for regulated debit card sales due to the Durbin Amendment legislation. Regulated debit cards are issued [...]

This Month’s Being Game: Being Forgiving Our monthly "Being Game", which comes from the Sacred Commerce practice and book of the same name, is practicing an aspect of the divine throughout each month and that we take turns interpreting, defining, and expressing. This month's game is Being Forgiving – a [...]

Featured Merchant: Back to the Roots Back to the Roots was founded by Alejandro Velez & Nikhil Arora two months before they graduated from UC Berkeley in 2009. A chance mention of the notion that mushrooms could be grown from recycled coffee grounds sparked an interest in growing healthy food [...]

Free Authorize.net Mobile App Did you know that Authorize.net offers a mobile application that is free with your Authorize.net account? This app is a great way to process transactions using your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch at off-site events (an Android app is coming soon!). All transactions are recorded in [...]

Goin' Phishin' In an effort to protect you against fraud we want to keep you informed about the latest phishing scams reported by Visa and Mastercard. Phishing is an attempt to garner secure information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by posing as a trustworthy source in an [...]

Dharma Attends May 2012 BALLE conference We attended our first Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) conference this past May and had such an enriching experience that we know it will be the first of many. It was held in the beautiful city of Grand Rapids and brought in [...]