Credit Card machines and T& I shooters

[Tigershark]

Okay, does anyone here use them and if so have you seen your sells go up?

In this economy seems I am getting more bad checks :mad: so I am looking at accepting Credit cards to help offset some of my losses and see if this improves things. I shoot small leagues 150 all the way up to leagues over 1000 kids. Any advice would be appreciated

[Alleh]

Well taking credit cards will help to continue the drowning economy but it's proven that people will spend more when it’s on credit. I would go for it in your line of business.

[johndeerrm]

credit card doesnt always mean CREDIT.

Debit cards are visa or mastercard as well.

[KHatch]

If you can get a processor with reasonable fees and you have no problem meeting their minimum, go for it.

It adds some extra management for you in how you record the transactions, processing, and recordkeeping, etc.

[jrm27]

When I was in a band we wanted to take credit cards for merch sales, but didn't want to go through the financial outlay to buy a card reader and a processing service. So, we set it up through paypal. We had a laptop open at our merch table and people could put their credit cards manually into the Paypal site. OR they could fill out an old fashioned piece of paper with their info and we could input it later if no internet was available. Worked great, was super cheap (I think paypal processing was 3%) and people indeed spent more. Good luck!

[johndeerrm]

When I was in a band we wanted to take credit cards for merch sales, but didn't want to go through the financial outlay to buy a card reader and a processing service. So, we set it up through paypal. We had a laptop open at our merch table and people could put their credit cards manually into the Paypal site. OR they could fill out an old fashioned piece of paper with their info and we could input it later if no internet was available. Worked great, was super cheap (I think paypal processing was 3%) and people indeed spent more. Good luck!

I was looking at doing that,

Does paypal send you a 1099 for taxes?

[jrm27]

You know... I can't remember. We were an S-Corp so we reported all income on our taxes... but i can't remember if Paypal sent us a 1099 or not. We kept all our own records anyway and reported absolutely everything.

[nwagirl]

So if you do sales at events, you can take the credit card / debit card info there and input it yourself into paypal at a later time? I was wondering about that as well and wasn't sure..

[Tigershark]

If you do that doesn't that defeat some of the purpose of a CC ? what if the number isn't valid, my entire theory on this was to prevent bad checks and hopefully increase sales but delivering a product or sale before you know they are approved could be costly I would think

[johndeerrm]

1) Validate the number by looking at the physical card.

2) Dont ship anything until you make the charge.

3) Pay attention to your AVS return codes on the charge. At the very least you should match zip only.

[jdouglas003]

So if you do sales at events, you can take the credit card / debit card info there and input it yourself into paypal at a later time?


This is probably not as straight forward as it seems. When I did this I ran into some problems. When I was doing it this way I was basically setting up Paypal accounts for the people that I got the credit card info from. This is not the way these Papal transactions are supposed to work so you would be kind of cheating. I got burned a few times when someone declined payment on their CC. You have no recourse in that case because Paypal will not back you.

Maybe there is another way of doing this but I would check it out first.

[Karizmatik]

^ That's odd. I remember before I had a account at paypal, I'd just enter my credit card details without a paypal account, and they'd process it as a "Guest".

All you do is setup a .. "Buy" product/button via PayPal to do this I think -- Set the amount, enter the "Guest" details, and voila!

[Tigershark]

i think I will just stick with cash and checks, I spoke with several processing companies and everyone wants to lock you into a 3 yr minimum deal and I don't see the benefit of it. I might try the paypal route but definately won't be signing up the merchant route anytime soon.

[JenniferLShort]

Has anyone set up on their business account or do you use your personal account?

[KHatch]

If you're in business, you should have/use a business account. :)