Mobile credit card processing ideas, please!

March 31, 2012 12:50 PM

What is the best solution for a small business to run credit card payments for small purchases with a mobile phone?

I own a small business that is now requiring me to find solution for taking credit card payments. We don't even have a business bank account set up yet. We will move small volume of products prices from $15 to $200. I think about 50 transactions a month. What are the best solutions for a small business. Thanks in advance!

posted by i_wear_boots to technology (12 answers total)

Square.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:56 PM on March 31, 2012 [2 favorites]

Take a look at Square.
posted by spaltavian at 12:56 PM on March 31, 2012 [2 favorites]

Absolutely Square.
posted by magnetsphere at 12:57 PM on March 31, 2012 [2 favorites]

I'm recommending Square so that there will be four recommendations, one for each side of the Square.
posted by Tomorrowful at 1:03 PM on March 31, 2012 [6 favorites]

If you are going to be using paypal, I believe they have a square-type device. (although, I think it is a triangle shape...)
posted by Vaike at 1:04 PM on March 31, 2012 [1 favorite]

i few alternatives to square that are worth considering. swipe has received a lot of press lately. depending on your exact needs something like levelup might work for you as well.
posted by phil at 1:32 PM on March 31, 2012 [1 favorite]

Square is great.
posted by limeonaire at 1:32 PM on March 31, 2012 [1 favorite]

Thank you all. I had a recommendation for Square from a very credible source I trust and also wanted to get some additional feedback to share with my business partners. Many thanks!
posted by i_wear_boots at 1:46 PM on March 31, 2012

PayPal Here.
posted by yogalemon at 1:46 PM on March 31, 2012

Just for completeness - my darling wife and I do art shows and are very happy using Square for the cc transactions. The only issue you could have would be whether you hit their monthly upper bound for transactions. You may want to have a backup strategy, such as using Paypal, for whatever time period might exist where you're at that limit but before you can get Square to up your limit.

Before Square came on the scene we used ProPay. It worked well for us but had an annual fee of around $80. There were no advantages to it over Square except that it existed :).
posted by phearlez at 3:01 PM on March 31, 2012 [1 favorite]

Square is really awesome. Never really encountered it but use it daily at my current job. I don't know if it would be ideal if you have hundreds of sales per day, as it's a bit flimsy, but for a few sales a day it's perfect.
posted by tremspeed at 7:57 PM on March 31, 2012

Paypal has recently released a square clone and apparently has lower fees by a tiny bit.

https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/credit-card-reader
posted by cschneid at 8:50 PM on March 31, 2012