accepting credit card

[KCBurke]

I hope you guys can help me, I tried the chat and it was like talking to the wall. I think I got "sorry, I don't understand what you are asking, please rephrase" about 5 times.....

I have a photography business and right now I have a different credit card processing company. I mainly only accept  credit cards during the summer when I am at art shows and occasionally for weddings (at the end of the shows I do a batch credit card processing when I get home). They are charging $20/month to use their service and a % of sales- which is too much when I only use it a few times a year. I was wondering if I would be able to use paypal to accept credit cards? Does paypal charge a monthly amount PLUS the % OR JUST the %? Also what are the differences between the premier and business accounts? What would best suit my needs? Thanks for you help, I hope it's not like the chat experience.

[har02052]

PayPal doesn't currently have anything that will probably work for you. I have been looking for a similar solution. Theonly thing that I have found is square. You can accept credit cards on your phone for a total of 3.5% +. 30 if you type in a person's card number or 2.75% if you use the swipe attachment that you plug in to the antenna jack of your smartphone. The other companies offer similar solutionsbut paypal doesn't yet unfortunately.

[KCBurke]

Hi, Thank you for replying. One of my photographer friends uses pay pal to accept credit cards. I am not looking for something to run them immediately but rather when I come home I can enter them in. This is what I had to do with my original company. I know about the other thing you mentioned, I don't have a smart phone and don't have intentions of buying one. I have a "knuckle buster" to make the carbon copy of credit card and have the customer sign so I am just looking for pay pal to enter to credit card info and the amount of the transaction so I can get paid. Pay pal has no option like this?

[har02052]

I think that they have merchant services but I think that you have to pay about $20 a month for the service.  I had been looking for something that I could run somebody's card immediately and so I am now using either square or the intuit gopayment.  Both have their pros and cons.  Another option is to take down each persons card number and billing address and three digit code from their card and then to charge them individually with paypal when you get home.  I have created a "donation" button link with paypal that when you click on it it brings up a payment page.  At that point you can enter all their info plus the amount you are charging them.  It isn't a perfect system, but so far it works for me.  I only am running a few cards a month, most of my business is with cash, so paying a $20 fee every month just isn't worth it.

[KCBurke]

That is my problem too! I only use it a few times a year at art shows and it's almost not worth accepting credit cards. I may have to try what you said. Last year I was using RSB World Pay with the carbon copy thing, and then I'd call them all in when I went home for the night. So I didn't know if it was accepted and denied until I got home, I just made sure to get all of their info incase it was denied. I like the square thing but don't really want to buy a smart phone just for that, I wonder if an ipod would work.

[har02052]

I am pretty sure an ipod will work as long as you have wifi access.  I don't think it will store the info to be submitted later.  Look at the differences between the square and gopayment.  I think that I am going to use the go payment only because of something that they don't really advertise for either of them.  The main problem is that square will only deposit $1000 maximum into your bank account at the end of the week and then the rest of whatever you charged around 30 days later.  the gopayment on the other hand will deposit the money into your account from all the transactions from a certain day around 2-3 days after you ran them, no matter the amount.  I talked to Customer service about it.  They said you can run $10K in one day and then three days later it is in your checking account.  As for square, you can run $10K in a day but they will only deposit $1K into your checking account at the end of the week and then the rest within one billing cycle later.  That is just too long to wait for the money.

[KCBurke]

Oh, Thank you for the information! You have been helpful

[PayPal_Andy]

Here's a link to our Virtual Terminal service.  I think it's more what you're looking for as far as service goes.  You would want to compare all the prices between them if you did want to look into the service.

Andy

[har02052]

Well for both of us we would use it infrequently and so the virtual terminal would not work out cost wise. With all the ways that paypal can take money it is odd that there is almost no way to take a credit card easily. I think that if paypal made a service similar to the square or gopayment through intuit it would quickly put the other services out of business. Otherwise I have a buy it now link on my phone that a customer then clicks on and they chose the pay with credit card option. It works but it is a bit 'messy' with having to jump through the hoops.