Accepting Credit Cards

[wildrose]

How do you put the amount in ? Do you have to wait till you get home to put the amount of what you sold on to their card ? Sorry if you all ready explained that. I'm kinda slow this morning..LOL.

Yup, I enter the cardholder's info and amount of sale when I get home, on the ProPay website. I can, however, do authorizations during an event via my cell phone (writing down the auth.# for reference) if I want. Takes time though; and since the customer is giving me their name/address/phone along with the card info, I am able to contact them if it doesn't go through. In over 10 years, THAT has only happened once.

[Gamekeeper]

I wish we had something like Square here in the UK, everyones running about with android/iphones yet we cant process payments on them.

Feels like we are back in the stone age!!

Dave

[UKRay]

I couldn't agree more, Dave. It is a real pain in the aspidistra when I see all that money walking past at a show but I can't afford the technology to snatch it. The most affordable deal I have found so far is a company suggested by the National Federation of Market Traders. I'm sure a quick web search will turn up their name 'cos I can't remember it right now.

Ray

[JohnBarton]

Y'all can take credit cards through PayPal.

It's simple.

Setup a catch-all ddress, mine is bigbox@jbideas.com A catchall account which means I can make up emails on the fly, so when I take a customer's card I can make up an email that looks like this - joepublic@jbideas.com and it will come into the bigbox mailbox.

The extra email is for you to send an invoice to through PP.

So what you do is you create an invoice through PP and send it to a made up email name, use the customer's name, SallySeashore@jbideas.com

THEN you get all the information from the customer, name on card, billing address, card number, phone number and ccv number.

THEN you go to the invoice you got in the email box and follow the directions, click on the link and follow the instructions to use a credit card. Then enter all that customer information into the form and submit it. You will then get a confirmation if it's good and you are paid instantly. No waiting for the money to be deposited. The rates are similar to Square. If you have a PayPal debit card then you can withdraw the money instantly.

It's obviously not as tidy as being able to run a card through a reader but it works and doesn't require any dedicated hardware. At a show it would be a bit cumbersome.

What I have done at shows is take an old ratchet machine, you know the sliders that make an imprint? I made my own invoices and left a space at the bottom for the card imprints. I get the imprint, let the customers fill out the required info and write down their driver's license info and make them sign the invoice on the line I put there just like a regular credit card receipt. Then depending on how I feel about them I either make them wait while I run their card or I give them the product and run it later. Since I had an actual merchant account I had my phone already set up to speed dial the authorization over the phone service and bring me to the part where I had to enter the card information. That worked of course with any phone and requires a merchant account. It's similar to what a lot of Iphone apps do now. Only I did it 8 years ago and we still do it at shows.

You can make your own invoices and have kinkos print them on carbonless paper. I make mine in the size of 5.5x8 with a white sheet on top and the yellow copy on the bottom. I keep the white sheet and the yellow one is the customer's copy. You can get little aluminum clipboards with storage space inside at office depot to hold the sheets. I have kinkos glue them up at 50 sets to a bundle.

Getting people to fill out all the information and sign it is also great protection against chargebacks. In 8 years I have only had two people try and as soon as I sent the scanned image of the receipt that they filled out to the processor the dispute was over.

I love the idea of SQUARE for taking payments and I ordered my reader last week. I wouldn't buy an Iphone/Android phone JUST for that purpose though. It's great if you already have the phone and the data service. If not then use the free wifi in the hotel and run your cards through PayPal as described above.

Regarding ProPay, I looked at them and they seem quite fee-heavy. I'd be wary of them as they seem to charge for everything. Make sure you understand all the fees before using them.

Lastly, here is an idea for Johanna. How about Leatherworker.net gets a merchant account and you grant access to it for a fee? Thus for example one of the benefits of being a paid member of LW.net is that you can use the merchant account to run cards for 1% over the standard fees. The way cards would be run would be using the phone in automated service I described above which all credit card processors offer. Thus the little guys who do a few shows a year can take credit cards on the spot without having to have a dedicated phone with internet at the venue. Just a thought and I realize that there are logistics but I think they are really no problem to work out.

[JohnBarton]

I wish we had something like Square here in the UK, everyones running about with android/iphones yet we cant process payments on them.

Feels like we are back in the stone age!!

Dave

Well, you guys can make a little coalition where you agree to get ONE merchant account and share it. Of course all the processors will tell you that's not allowed but it's BS. They would just prefer that EVERY small business have their own. In fact there are TONS of services on the net which are essentially resellers of their own merchant accounts. They provide credit card acceptance services to people who don't want to have a full merchant account by charging a little more than the actual processor charges them.

Obviously this method would require a fair amount of trust between you but it would spread out the costs and allow all of you to accept cards using any phone.

Edit: FWIW I jsut got an IPAD and I think that this thing is God's gift to retailers. This plus an internet connection is a DO-ALL device. We have been using it in the shop to reference cases and it's simply amazing. Using the aforementioned PayPal method of accepting cards would be a snap on this as well as using Square or any other method. Honestly this thing has SO many uses for business that it and devices like it will be indispensable in a few years.

I highly recommend investing in one of these if you do more than a few shows per year. Get the cheapest internet plan and use it sparingly unless you plan to do a lot more then get the one that fits your needs.

Edited June 2, 2011 by JohnBarton