Card machine costs/fees. New business start up noob.

[Spanna]

Hi fellas, some advice or discussion on receiving card payments is needed for myself. The info on pricing and how to actually get a company to provide me one seem scarce without giving my info to tons of people and having them give me a sales call. I've never done card payments before, I was working from home and would receive bank transfers mostly given the line of work (signwriting) was almost exclusively business to business.

Now I'll be having a unit so I expect some walk in customers for t-shirts, business cards or just small car stickers, so I'll need to be able to take payments via card. Now, I have used the PayPal Here app previously and input card details via that, the fee for that privilege is around 3.2% whereas direct PayPal card payments via their reader is 2.75%. It seems very steep to me, but I don't know what sort of card costs I should be expecting or who to go to.

Now comes how much I should be expecting to take via card payments, frankly I have no idea, Probably around £1500 per month given I sell business cards and leaflets etc now but businesses pay me via bank transfer before collecting usually so I can suggest they just pay by card when they come as can people collecting their vans after having signs done instead of asking for BACs. The rest would remain as bank transfer with the larger businesses I do work for tend to pay 'at the end of the month' (with much prompting).

Any advice much appreciated.

[ReaderScars]

This topic has come up a few times so it might be worth doing a search. Some people recommend iZettle, I looked into it once, didn't like what I read regarding their responses to fraudulent card usage which left the victim (which would be you) high and dry.

SumUp sounded safer but things might have changed and I've used neither.

[CraigJ]

Both me and the wife use Sumup card machines.

https://sumup.co.uk/

1.95% per transaction with no other fees.

£29 for the car reader. Takes Visa/ Vpay/ Mastercard/ Maestro/ American Express/ Apple/android pay and contact-less too.

the wife uses hers quite often but i only have mine for first time customers as i usually get paid by transfers but its handy just in case.

Takes 2/3 days for it to land in your bank account though (the only downside if you want it there asap)

They have a good easy to use online site that you can take payments over the phone with as well.

Wife did lots of reading on these before going for it and it seemed the best one at the time.

Edited by CraigJ on Wednesday 30th August 12:20

[Australiam]

The wife has been using iZettle daily for about 3 years, and loves it. If I asked her why, she would say that 'it's simple, and it just works'. Although it was more expensive than some, when we last costed it out, it did not make sense to change. But as the card readers have come down - I think we will review again.

[Spanna]

Thanks for the replies.

Seems PayPal is surprisingly competitive on pricing. I'll just buy one of their card readers to start with and see how I get on, it can easily be dropped for a different service and picked back up again whenever I need to.

[MrSparks]

We have PayPal/Stripe/WorldPay and I would honestly say just go with PayPal Here and a Stripe Account.

The PayPal fees are a bit more, but your volume is unknown, I would concern yourself more with making sales and growing the business, saving 1% on your fees is easier when you're not worried about 12 month contracts and monthly costs.

Stripe is completely free and good rates, so it's ideal for phone and online orders. (alongside PayPal) plus you'll be up and running in about 10 minutes with no monthly fees!

[williaa68]

Depending on your volumes, netpay via Costco (if you are a Costco member) are cheap. I only have a couple of clients that pay by credit card but they pay quickly and the amounts are fairly substantial so worth it for me:

https://www.netpay.co.uk/costco