how do you accept payment?

June 5, 2023 2:13 AM

Hi all, are there any tradespeople, bankers, shopkeepers here? How do you accept non-cash payments? Are there any other ways not a terminal? I would like to look into this, so I'm interested.
posted by Adamsn to Technology (14 answers total)

Mentioning which country you're in might help, if you want advice that's directly useful to you. Solutions that work with one country's banking system won't necessarily work with yours.
posted by fabius at 4:38 AM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Northeast USA: My hairdresser uses a dongle type device that attaches to her phone for Square payments. Craft vendors I've paid almost all use Venmo and have their QR code displayed.
posted by cobaltnine at 4:56 AM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Square is a phone-based device that allows you to swipe credit cards. There is a transaction fee but no monthly fee.

App-based payment services include PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. Zelle allows money transfers directly from participating banks, and WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger both have options to make payments through their chat functions.
posted by ananci at 5:09 AM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm in the UK, and card purchases I make from market stalls are usually listed on my statement as "SumUp [vendor name]" or "Zettle [vendor name]".
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 5:28 AM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Australia: I issue an invoice, my client pays direct into my bank account from theirs, all online. Or payid if in person, which is done on phone and is instant.

Cash at this point mostly means under the table honestly.
posted by deadwax at 6:03 AM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Chase has a web portal for free if you're a business customer. Just log in and accept payment.

Square gives out a free/cheap reader that connects to phone or tablet.

And then all the apps... Venmo is my fave. I dislike zelle and cashapp personally
posted by chasles at 7:16 AM on June 5, 2023

Within Canada, the big one is Interac e-Transfer®. It's run by our national debit card operating agency. It has a $1.50 fee per transaction. There are some limits on security which all users need to understand.

I've used Interac to pay back friends for meals, buy stuff on local sales sites, send donations/gifts, pay office rent and manage shared household accounting. I've also had my salary paid via Interac on a couple of occasions.
posted by scruss at 7:46 AM on June 5, 2023

We have a PayPal business account and can hand enter a certain number of entries at a flat rate. If we need to run more than that, we use a dongle like the Square ones. PayPal is already connected to our bank and all that so we just went with it.
posted by fiercekitten at 7:56 AM on June 5, 2023

Interac fees, like ATM fees, for consumers are often covered by your bank. I didn't even know that there was a fee associated with sending transfers as none of my banks charge me a fee.
posted by Mitheral at 8:38 AM on June 5, 2023

Partly, it depends on your setting. In my retail experience, if you're running a "checkout counter" sort of setup in a permanent location, going with a traditional dedicated terminal makes so much sense, for ease and efficiency, especially if you anticipate a high volume of customers, particularly one right after the other. Most of these customer-facing terminals are fairly common in how they operate, people generally know what to do, and it requires a minimum of interaction or explanation between the merchant and the customer.

For more of a farmers market or festival style of vending, in a temporary location, or if you're doing onsite work as a contractor, app or phone based systems like Venmo, Zelle, or Square start to make more sense. You're typically doing fewer transactions per day, they're spaced out more (it's not customer after customer, one right after another), and so if you need to give a few words of "do this, and then do this" it's not a deal breaker for either the merchant or the customer.

If you make it hard or complicated for people to pay you, be prepared for them to decide it's just not worth it and take their business elsewhere. If you're going the phone/app route, be prepared to utilize multiple services. Northwestern US here; Venmo and CashApp seem to be the most ubiquitous; if you insist on Zelle only, for example, be prepared for people to think "Eh, can't be bothered to sign up for yet another service and install their app; forget it."
posted by xedrik at 8:48 AM on June 5, 2023

→ Interac fees, like ATM fees, for consumers are often covered by your bank

Really? I've banked with several banks/credit unions, and they've all charged the $1.50
posted by scruss at 11:22 AM on June 5, 2023

Square still offers the phone credit card reader
posted by kschang at 12:01 PM on June 5, 2023

The search term you want is "Point of Sale systems". Most smaller businesses I see use Square for their POS systems, but you may decide to look around for other options.
posted by Aleyn at 5:08 PM on June 6, 2023

NZ here. Almost all payments I receive are bank to bank (usually my client from a computer or an app, otherwise they go to the bank and get a teller to do it), we no longer have paper cheques in NZ.

The real hassle is payments to/from offshore (Australia), and the only reliable ways I've found are paypal, or my bank (both have a fee of ~NZ$40) but I believe paypal is about to become impossible for legal reasons I don't understand.

I've looked at a dozen others but most either do not allow payments to close/one-person companies, or don't interoperate with NZ, or have layers of legalise/require funds to be large e.g. Tor, or are scams like Wyse - which took my $40 join up fee and just would not allow login creation.

I think it all goes back to fact that NZ banks are anti-copmetive andhave captured the regulators. NZ is quite corrupt but like our supposed clean green image, there's a lot of PR.
posted by unearthed at 12:30 PM on June 7, 2023