Thinking about accepting credit cards, I was contacted by merchant warehouse with a program that seems reasonable. just wondering what kind of system you guys use and what kind of charges you have.

steve,

square up

www.squareup.com

2.74% fee straight - all major cards and they give you swipers for your iphone, ipad etc....
nice easy system no crazy commitment just simple take the card, pay them a fee for doing so.

know quite a few who use that

justin

i dont have an iphone or ipad just a laptop,merchant warehouse has a program where you just swipe the card in the old carbon copy printer and then you enter the info into your laptop...payment in 24-48hrs, but it's 8 dollars a month charge and 2.5 on each transaction.

You do not need an iphone/ipad for Square. Check the website it gives a long list of phones it works with.

Also you don't need the swiper. You can manually enter card numbers but will have a higher rate.

I explored many options over the past year including Intuits GO PAYMENT SOLUTIONS and settled on Squareup as well because of the flat rate and no monthly fees. I use a Samsung Infuse and there have been no issues with the processing and the deposits have been made promptly in 1-2 business days. I have had customers say that they actually preferred to pay by CC in order to get reward points - especially with AMEX. When I process the transaction I also take a pic of the service agreement. When you combine this with the GPS location of the sale, the physical card swipe and the customers signature it would be unlikely that a chargeback could take place.

Almost forgot to mention this - Buy your swiper at Wal Mart for $9.96. In the box is a $10 redemption code. Then go the app store on your phone and download the squareup app. After doing so they will send you a free swiper. After you go online and link your bank account $10 will be deposited to make the swiper free. Now you will have 2 swipers in case one fails.

great idea guys... ive wanted to use CC but it just seemed like so much hassle.. this program looks really easy so i loaded it also on my droid and will have my swiper in the mail. good idea on the swiper from Walmart.. im gonna pick on up. thanks for this info guys.. really will help me this year.

Remember that with square if you manually enter a payment over 1000 dollars square will hold on to it for a month. Not sure if it was because I just started using Square or because of the amount.

good to know Pro.. i will make sure to do it in $500 increments.

Yes, I believe if you meet or exceed this amount in manually keyed transactions they will hold it. (Fraud prevention - See the terms on the website or your service agreement) However, chances are you will do a swiped transaction with the customer present. I'll absorb the fees up to $500 and then charge & add in a 3% "convenience" fee after that. This encourages them to write me a check at that point - which I prefer on larger amounts.

I just went into the app to clarify this again for myself. Square states:

"If you accept more than $1,000 in card-not-present credit card payments during any trailing seven day period, Square will defer depositing the amount in excess of $1,000 for 30 days."

"If you foresee yourself primarily entering transactions manually or if you notice your manually entered transactions are being held, write in here (link). We're happy to increase your deposit limit to an amount that works for your business."

We put on all contracts above $500 the fee applies as well. This does encourage folks to write checks if they want to avoid the fee.
We've had plenty of clients use this, it is great, plus they sign on our smart phone or pad device which is a bonus in backing up their
purchase.

Plus you can log into the account anytime and see all the charges.

You can also setup various services ie. typical service call $75.00 or gopher treatment $100.00 etc... so you can quickly tap and pull up
the service type and take payment. for folks who do lots of repetitive work this can be an asset.

justin

ps. just saw the swiper in wal-mart, thought "why are they selling what is free through square," now I know about the rebate, thanks folks!

Is there a phone number where I can talk to a live person about square?

Jim, it's not one of those services where you can speak to a live person. Most communication is done through email.

Justin - are you using an iPad? It appears you can set up pre-defined pricing on the iPad but not on anything else. If I missed something let me know as I would like to set up my Infuse in that manner. I have toyed with getting an iPad for the field as the price has dropped fairly well but there are some other promising tablets coming out this year so I'll play wait and see. But who knows...

Mike,

I didn't realize that, other guys not using apple might know. I typically use my iphone, used to use the ipad for size but the iphone does the trick
too.

Not sure why they would limit that setup to one phone system but who knows.

Justin

I have a square for backup but mainly use Intuit. Not only is it a bit better rate, you can lower it even more down the road for 12 bucks a month. I know most people don't like the monthly commitment, but it's cheaper to have a 1.64% swiped and 2.47% keyed for a bit more volume even with the added monthly cost. Without the 12 dollar a month, you can get a rate of 2.70% for swiped. No contracts either way. Everything gets deposited immediately and no cap at 1k like square. Works the same with iPhone, iPad, and android phones too. Just as simple interface and works just as well as Square. If you use Quickbooks, it's integrated and puts the info right in the books for you. I used square first and now I just keep it in case I lose my intuit swiper. The first swiper is also free. You can find several comparisons online. If you do less than 1k a month, maybe square would be better. But once you do so much a month, it's cheaper to go with the 12 dollar a month with no contract.

I use my iPad for invoicing/estimates, signing and sending out emails. It automatically breaks down my quarterly income for me to print out for the accountant. I can, at the click of a button, put a paypal button in the invoice after it's emailed Heck if the phone companies can say go "green" and stop using paper, so can I! For the occasional guy that refuses, I just bring him and invoice on my return trip and also use a carbonless document if he really insists. Most don't. That's a big savings after a period of time. No carbonless copies and printouts since an inkjet printer averages out to be 10 cents a copy.

Thanks for that post Jerry! That sounds like a great system.