Credit Card Processing WTF?

[TyrantDesigner]

CUSTOMER REWARDS
I tell them, no they are not, it's coming out of our accounts not theirs. These idiots- Chase; Capital One; American Airline; AMex etc...love to tell their holders that they can get cash back. And spend a lot of advertising money to sell them. But all the funds are coming for us! Not their pockets.

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That is the main reason I don't take AMex and a couple others. People don't understand when I tell them the effective charge to the company for terminal fees is aroung 8-11% depending on the card. It's completely horrible. I've gone so far as to offer around 9% in discounts to not take cards entirely. Whether that discount comes from end sale price or throwing them a little extra as a bonus (couple shirts with their logo on it, or a few extra signs, etc) .. whatever works. I would much rather it seem like I'm awesome, vs their credit card being awesome and me just being the a-hole who is grumpy about cc fees. Still raised my prices by about 15% to counter act those fees though.

I mean, I had a job I underbid because it was for a good cause, and was making no money on the job (all my overhead was covered though) and it still came out to being $1500 ... he tried to pay with an AMex and I declined that garbage like a bat from hell. After he got mad and I told him I'm not losing money on the job and explained why ... he left ... saw the work he got done ... place matched my price out of california and looked like garbage ... but they took AMex!

 

[Rocco G]

OK, so I've finally decided to join the 21st century after never having taken CC's before (over 30 years). I signed up with Square and am about to take a deposit on a nice channel letter job. I read the thread but are there any other pitfalls to watch out for? I've been making/hanging signs since they were hand painted, but I learn something new almost every day.

 

[Techman]

use this link for the square sign up

You will get FREE processing for a while.

https://squareup.com/i/CD0F0BD0

 

[Desert_Signs]

OK, so I've finally decided to join the 21st century after never having taken CC's before (over 30 years). I signed up with Square and am about to take a deposit on a nice channel letter job. I read the thread but are there any other pitfalls to watch out for? I've been making/hanging signs since they were hand painted, but I learn something new almost every day.

I ran almost $500k through square last year. Not a single issue. Yes, I pay more. But the time I save in using square vs. our other processor justifies the additional cost. Time is money, and when it takes 30 seconds to process through square versus the 5 minutes I spend with the other company makes it worth it. Square needs very little info. My other processor wants everything almost including a DNA sample for card not present transactions. At least 75% of my transactions are CNP.

I paid about 16k in fees. If I used my other processor, I would have saved about $3k. Let's imagine the person processing the transaction makes $15 an hour. I ran about 600 transactions. That means using the other processor, my employee would have spent about 200 hours entering transactions, at a base cost to me of $3375. That doesn't even account for the time spent entering transactions versus making me money. So, square is actually costs me less, even though the fees are higher....

 

[BALLPARK]

I charge our clients fee that we are charged to use the card. Last deposit for a project was paid on a CC. They paid an extra $280 to use the CC instead of a check. We are not large enough to cover the CC fees, we are a small company that needs every penny to stay open..lol.

We use square and feel like it's a great fit for us.

 

[Desert_Signs]

I charge our clients fee that we are charged to use the card. Last deposit for a project was paid on a CC. They paid an extra $280 to use the CC instead of a check. We are not large enough to cover the CC fees, we are a small company that needs every penny to stay open..lol.

We use square and feel like it's a great fit for us.

I don't charge extra for using credit cards, I just charge extra for everyone. 99% of my customers use CC, so I just build that into my pricing, assuming a card is going to be used. If someone offers cash or check, I give them a discount at time of payment. I found that tacking on an extra fee just caused arguments. If they don't know they're paying the extra 3%, they don't care. At the same time, offering a discount for cash and check makes some people feel like they're getting something great. So, it works out for me doing it that way.

 

[FireSprint.com]

We use PayPal and are very happy. We have a pretty good plan set up with them.

If you do more than $10,000 a month and take a larger percentage of online or phone CC payments, PayPal is a good option. (And I don't mean making our customers use PayPal, we accept credit cards just like any other shop).

You can pretty easily get it down to 2.2% + 30 cents for V MC & D.

 

[BALLPARK]

I don't charge extra for using credit cards, I just charge extra for everyone. 99% of my customers use CC, so I just build that into my pricing, assuming a card is going to be used. If someone offers cash or check, I give them a discount at time of payment. I found that tacking on an extra fee just caused arguments. If they don't know they're paying the extra 3%, they don't care. At the same time, offering a discount for cash and check makes some people feel like they're getting something great. So, it works out for me doing it that way.

Never thought about doing it like that...thanks!

That does make better sense and opens up being the good guy for discounts when paying cash / check.