what are the best card payment services available?

[Gary Birch]

Neil
We do ours through an online service from Worldpay. We will pay more doing it this way but we probably only take 1 or 2 a week.

Worth looking at for small users.

Cheers

Gary

[Jon Marshall]

How does that work Neil?

[Gary Birch]

I have tried doing a quick search for info but don’t have the time at the moment. We have a merchant account with them which in hind sight probably got us this facility cheaper than normal. we paid a 1 off fee of £50 and then we just pay a fee on each transaction.

If you delve deeper you may find the info here http://www.rbsworldpay.com/products/ind … =ecom&c=UK

Cheers

Gary

[Gavin MacMillan]

The FSB seem to offer a good service for anyone that is a member – we haven’t actually taken it up but are thinking about it – We get asked a fair bit and it would also help when chasing bills, when people say ‘cheque will be posted…’ we can just ask for card details and take payment quicker. It may cause other problems but we are seriously thinking about it.

G

[Warren Beard]

I recently got a business paypal account which is £20 a month and then a fee per transaction (fee and percentage of total amount)

No contracts.

My issue with this is that I think it’s better to wait a week or 2 for a cheque then lose 3.5% to take payment by card?

Paypal wasn’t the best rates but with no set up fees or contract I am trialing it and can cancel at any time.

The jury’s still out though 😕

Warren

[Dan Osterbery]

Hi Guys,
do the banks not give you a machine? Here we asked the bank they gave us a machine that will either swipe or you put in the card details and it will take the money without the card being present? The more transactions you do the better off you are to negotiate with the bank to drop their percentage, we use ours a lot now, take card details on acceptance of quote and it is that little bit of extra security, and useful when you get "i’ll do the transfer" or the old "cheques in the post"

cheers

Dan

also the time spent chasing unpaid bills is often less than the percentage the bank takes in the first place!

[John Gregson]

Hi Warren,
If you do pay banking charges the paypal account works, especially for orders of under £30.00 – £40.00.

I get charged with Natwest for receiving cheques and also for the paying in slip used when depositing the cheque in the bank.

With a Paypal account you can get paid from your customers upfront, if you wish, so there’s no chasing to get paid.

Cheers John

[Warren Beard]

My bank only charges me to deposit cash and nothing to deposit cheques, also have no monthly charges so it works out a saving to take cheques over credit/debit cards.

Besides the chasing which is not too time consuming as I don’t have 100’s to chase, maybe only 3 or 4 a month it is not really worth while for me to take cards…. yet.

Like I said for my business so far it is an extra expense and not totally worth while but that could change, more and more people are asking me if I take cards and as it increases might be worth while to go with a bank and pay less per transaction etc.

It’s early days for me and testing it so can’t really say more than my limited experience and thoughts.

cheers

Warren

[Phill Fenton]

We got ours a few years ago and don’t know how we managed without before.

Ours is with streamline. But there are plenty of merchant services sales out there who are offering good terms and incentives to get you to deal with them.

We pay £14.95 a month and a percentage per transaction charge.

[Paul Hughes]

what Phill said.

Paul

[David Rowland]

What Paul, Phill and Gavin said
Dave

[Chris Wool]

what ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ he said
and you don’t have to go to the bank to pay it in that alone is worth 3 quid in a hundred