Accepting Credit Cards

[wildrose]

Most recently, I was using First Data Merchant Services, but had a massive problem with them and dropped them. (Long story, not getting into it) I really feel it is best for my business if I am able to accept credit cards, though, which leads me to asking:

Who do you use as a service provider? What is your monthly fee? I have never paid more than 15.00/month, and really don't feel my level of business merits paying more than that. Some months, I do alot of business, others next to none. So I don't want a high monthly fee.

Suggestions?

[CitizenKate]

Holly, I've been considering switching to ProPay. They seem to offer credit card merchant accounts with a lot of great options for small businesses without a lot of hoops to jump through, and reasonable rates.

But if you decide on someone else, I hope you get back to us here and let us know what you found out.

Kate

[calanneh]

I use PayPal. Never had a problem and they don't charge a monthly fee. They charge a very small % when a transaction is processed.

Been using them for abotu 5 or 6 years.

William

[K-Man]

Paypal is good, except for those of us in the gun/shooting industry. Ebay owns Paypal and they're anti-gun, so there's a fairly large group of customers of ours who won't use them for that reason alone. We use National Processing Company out of Houston, TX. I've been with them for about 5/6 years now. Percentage is less than 2% + .25/transaction fee for Mastercard/VISA. Discover and American Express are up around 3%. Chargebacks are $15/each. Monthly fee is ~$11.00. There is a minimum monthly amount that you have to process, but it's really, really low if I remember correctly (~$25). They have the equipment you can either lease to own or purchase outright. Transactions are uploaded via landline; they do have cell phone capabilities, but there's an extra fee for that option and it's hit or miss on the cell tower location in relation to where you are.

[RunningRoan]

I had used PayPal for everything in the past. PayPal has Virtual Terminal, where you collect your customer's card info, then plug it into PayPal. Costs $30 per month for Virtual Terminal and you can cancel it when you don't need it, then restart the service when you do. Of course you need an internet connection to do that. Last time I checked into it, there was no card-swiper that worked to import numbers into Virtual Terminal for you. Everything had to be hard keyed in. I accepted credit cards at shows this way too. I had no way of knowing if the cards were any good until I got home (or somewhere with my laptop and internet) and spent the time to run each one. Luckily, I never got burned, but I knew it was only a matter of time!

So I went through my bank and got hooked up with a wireless credit card machine (complete with swiper) and a wireless printer. The machine is not cheap, but the percentages per transaction are less than what PayPal charged. Plus I can verify funds on the spot before my customers leave with the merchandise. It looks a lot more professional too and customers feel more at ease seeing me use that machine than they did with my old method.

If I didn't travel though, I would've just stuck with PayPal's Virtual Terminal. But being able to process cards on the spot was important to me.

[wildrose]

I surfed PayPal's site for info...As you noted, they charge 30.00/month. That's a little steep for me.

[Daggrim]

I use Paypal for my online sales...easy to figure out how to xfer funds, and you can xfer money to and from people who don't have a Paypal account. For shows I use my banks merchant services credit card processing service. I use the dial up method...laborious but cheap. I need to punch in 52 numbers into my cell phone to complete a transaction. Getting it right the first time is hard when there are customers all around. But it's within my budget. Also, the service is "seasonal", so I can hibernate it in my off season. $30 / month vs $5 / month. Never had any problem with either method in 3 years.

Daggrim

[The Major]

I use Propay. No monthly fee. I have the premium package which is $60 a year. its 3.25-3.75% per transaction plus $0.35. You can only process $3000 per month and a max of $500 per transaction. No minimum amount of sales.

Plus they just started offering a card reader, which does have a monthly fee ($5.00).

[RunningRoan]

I surfed PayPal's site for info...As you noted, they charge 30.00/month. That's a little steep for me.

The percentage they take from each sale is a tad on the high side also. But it is easy to set up/use and convenient with no contract, so I suppose that's the trade off.

I had thought about getting wireless internet service for my laptop and taking it to shows to utilize PayPal Virtual Terminal on the road. That may be an option for those thinking about PayPal, but wanting to process cards on the spot. I didn't do it because my goal was to get a card processing machine when I felt I was ready and I didn't want to get roped into a wireless internet contract.

[wildrose]

I wrote to ProPay and still (2 days later) haven't heard anything back...hmm....

[The Major]

Personally, I would try calling them. They are very slow to respond to email

[jammon]

My wife and I have been using ProPay since June of this year and have been really happy with it. No problems at all.

[wildrose]

I've heard back from ProPay now and think that's who I'm going to go with. It seems to be just what I need.

[MADMAX22]

Careful with paypal as if they decide to audit your account they can freeze all funds that are related to it. Including the checking/savings account associated with it. Not sure if this correlates to business's but Im sure that something similer does.

It doenst seem to happen very often but if someone complains to paypal that they got burned by you then they can freeze accounts to audit them and any money in that account will not be accesible.

[cdthayer]

Careful with paypal as if they decide to audit your account they can freeze all funds that are related to it. Including the checking/savings account associated with it....

Good point. We have PayPal and we set it up with a special checking account just for PayPal transactions, plus backed it up with a personal credit card that we can shut down quickly and doesn't have anything to do with our business account.

We also have a Merchant Account through our local bank. It costs more than some of the independent companies, but it's handy for no more credit cards than we take. We just have "Voice Authorization", so we have to punch everything in on the phone, but it doesn't care if it's a cell phone or a landline. We generally don't get authorization during the sale when at shows, but call them in later. It depends on the amount of the sale. But we usually call the authorization in each time at the store, and on a speaker phone so the customer can hear everything for themselves. They can hear why it takes the time we spend, and the customer is in the loop if there's a problem. Haven't had any complaints yet, and the regular customers usually spend the time browsing the merchandise close by (sometimes increasing sales).

[Big Papa Leather]

I use Propay and have for almost 3 years now.

Only thing I dislike is it takes 3 days to do anything.

3 day to recieve your money.

3 days to transfer to bank account.

Using the debit card eliminates the 3 day transfer deal.

I just started using the card reader and it has been very convenient.

Allen

[wildrose]

I've gotten set up with ProPay and will begin using them this weekend. The payment time delay is an issue, but weighing it against other concerns, I think I'll take it. I've not gotten their reader yet, but am considering it at a future point.

[bruce johnson]

I have just started looking into this deal too. Some of these processing deals are nuts. My local banks has enough fees, charges, and set ups that even with the lower percentage I am about $400-600 behind the 8 ball to start every year. It really looks like the Propay deal from what I can read is a better deal than the virtual terminal from Paypal. A few good testimonials for it here. From the other side of the coin, has anyone had a bad experience??