Card reader & App payment system

[Jamesnkr]

It's literally once every blue moon that I need to take a card payment over the phone.

"I'm sorry, we're not set up to take those. Would you be able to make a bank transfer?" Of course. At fairs I find younger people will have their telephones set up to make a bank transfer more quickly than I can get the Paypal machine steamed up.

[GeoSpectrum]

PayPal also offer something called Virtual Terminal. It allows you to take pay,net over the phone, using The PayPal website, It is separate from PayPal Here.

[markw]

I've just changed from a standard card reader to Izettle and apart from the fact that the battery life on the Bluetooth card reader is really poor all is working well. Our turnover is high enough to get us into the lowest charge bracket but its still marginally more expensive than the traditional card reader. I had come to the end of a 4 year contract on the old reader and want the flexibility of no contract. To get a reader upgrade would have tied me into another 4 years and that wasn't going to happen again.
I have had no negative feedback from customers, in fact most comment on how neat and efficient it is (Bluetooth star printer for receipts). I use a Microsoft Surface running Estlite and it would be so nice if I could run the iZettle app on this - but they don't seem to like Microsoft. So its an iPhone connected by Bluetooth to the receipt printer and card machine.

The one big downfall is not being able to take remote payments. probably handle this through Paypal for now although I am exploring other options.

[Glimpse]

I've signed up to a 2 year contract with the merchant services provider. It was even cheaper for 36 months but not significantly...

[pramsay13]

I thought at first the battery life on the iZettle was really poor, but I discovered you can turn it off rather than letting it go into standby.
I only use it once or twice a week, and it will last me all week on a single charge no problem.
If it runs out of charge it only takes a minute or so when plugged in to come back on again.

[Graysalchemy]

I think I am going to go for Worldpay zinc. Not the cheapest rate 2.75% but if you take over £750 a month it is worth paying the £5.99 monthly fee to get the rate dropped to 1.95%. The other added advantage one which is the biggest draw for me is being able to take payments over the phone as well. That way I can take telephone orders and take an upfront payment before I start the work.

[flathead]

Ive just taken on the Payleven card reader. Think its similar setup to Izettle.
Had real fun with it to start with. It had been associated to someone elses account and wouldnt work.
The whole process of applying for one to getting it working was about 2 weeks.
Now that ive got it, it seems to work fine.
Payments seem to take a while to reach my account but for a £29.99 reader its not bad

[misterdiy]

We had card machine, internet account with Worldpay and PayPal. The advantages of using the card machine and internet payment gateway which were with Worldpay were the perceived cost savings over PayPal. But this was not the case. We ditched the card machine and replaced with iZettle saving £30 per month. Although the iZettle headline charges are more costly, they are in fact cheaper when taking into account machine rental and compliance charges. We still have Worldpay for the internet account but we have had loads of hassle with Worldpay (and still do) which has meant lots of phone calls to sort out and also I have noticed that Worldpay use premium rate calls for their customer services! I have had nothing but trouble with their "Safer Payments" arm who are rude to say the least and extremely inefficient and expensive. We are going to ditch this account too and move over to PayPal virtual terminal for phone payments. We already have PayPal as one payment method on the website. The only issue I have is that we may lose business because people think they need a PayPal account to pay for their goods online.

The advantages of iZettle and PayPal is no monthly charges (you pay for what you use) although this could be more expensive if the volume through the website is high. I need to do the figures on that, but it is not too easy because of the "hidden" charges on the Worldpay account. There is no lock-in with either iZettle or PayPal which gives the flexibility to change should a good deal come up.

I see that PayPal have increased their operating charges too, which means makes the evaluations more tricky now (3.4% +20p/transaction) averaging 4% on most transactions

[GeoSpectrum]

PayPal have a sliding scale of charges, as your volume reaches certain thresholds the % charge comes down, I'm on the second tier which means I need to have more than £1500 through the account monthly, the next tier is £6000.

[IFGL]

That is interesting, do you know what the charges are, and how many tiers are there?

[GeoSpectrum]

Here you go.

https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/paypal-fees

[misterdiy]

I must admit I had never read down that far on the PayPal site so clearly if I consolidated payments things would be a lot better. Thanks Alan.

[IFGL]

I will investigate further, I think that even though we would be on the 1.9% + 20p, it would still be cheaper for us on our current scheme even with the terminal rent, I don't think there's much in it though and not having the rental agreement seems a good thing.

[Whitewater Gallery]

Izettle is a little cheaper than Paypal, not you cannot take payments without the cardholder being present which is a bit of a pain. We have iZettle in our smaller Gallery and a rental terminal in the main location as we do take payments over the phone.

[Graysalchemy]

Zinc you can take payments without card holder present. I have used mine a few times now with ease and simplicity but I must check my account to see if I actually got paid.

[Jamesnkr]

Paypal is only 2.75% if you are accepting payments by chip & pin, not swiping or by telephone. On that basis their fees drop when you hit £6,000 in a month. N.B. their fees are based on the previous month's takings, not the current month. Very frustrating if you don't do that sort of deal every month - I only took card payments in three months last year.

iZettle reduce from 2.75% if you take £2000 in a month, and they base their fees on your takings in the current month, not the previous month, which is a bonus.

They both slay on you debit card fees though, charging you 2.75% whereas a 'proper' bank would only charge you 20p flat rate.

I find - but I'm not in the same business world as the rest of the people here - that people will happily do an online bank transfer to me. They can often get it done more quickly than I can get the paypal machine turned on and synched to my iPhone. I also regularly take cheques.

[Glimpse]

Quick update from me, I put a rental terminal in in November, I'd kept a rough tally of how many customers wanted to pay by card before I took the plunge, and it was around 60%. About 10% of customers paid by cheque, but that was always those who had wanted to pay by card.

However, in the run up to Christmas, things changed considerably with almost all my customers (over 90%) paying by card.

This was my first full Christmas period trading, so I'm on a bit of a learning curve, but my assumption is that people prefer to use plastic at Christmas and I would have inconvenienced a lot of customers had I insisted on cash or cheque only.

It's also distorted my initial calculations in favour of the rented terminal as I took far more payments than I expected.

[Jamesnkr]

I think people are lazy and find paying by plastic easier than any other way. It doesn't mean you have to encourage them to. Keep the card machine hidden and they'll offer you cash and cheques... And if you tell them that the bank's fees are crippling for small businesses, and they like you, then they'll be even keener to help you.

I'm more inclined to pay cash at small businesses than at Tesco. Which is silly as I have shares in Tesco.

[Glimpse]

I've also noticed people are less likely to haggle if they pay by card... Or, say a bill comes to £72.00, how many times do you get the customer handing you £70 in notes and then going through that theatrical search for some change in the hope that you'll say "it's OK, call it 70..."

[Jamesnkr]

That £2 is 2.75% which is exactly the same as the card company would take from you... much better giving it to the customer!