I set up my booth at several festivals last year and did a pretty decent business at most of them. I had a lot of stuff priced at "I have that much in my pocket" prices, but also carried several guitars I wanted to make it easy to pay for. So, I signed up with Square and used it in my laptop tied to a 4G wifi tether from T-Mobile.
That worked OK and I had no complaints with Square, but the laptop set up as a bit clunky. With no touch screen customers didn't have a simple way to sign for their order. But, I just received a gift of a Google Nexus 7 tablet with unlocked 4G. Cool! I can use that with the Square card reader and customers can just sign on the touchscreen!
Well, not so fast. Square doesn't support the Google Nexus 7.
So, I like this little tablet and the price was right, I want to find a way to use it at festivals. There are several other credit card processing companies that work similar to Square and support this tablet (Paymentmax, PayAnywhere, GoPayment, etc...). But, which one?
Have any of y'all used any of the other companies? What'd you think?
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back when I use to do jewelry / beadwork at shows I was for a long time afraid to do anything but cash every once in a while ide take a check but was not happy about that either . well... now I'm looking at things a new kinda way and believe me it works I've got 2 suppliers that I've been dealing with and from day 1 I place an order, and it arrives in the mail with an invoice I write a check and send it the next business day, and I usually get an email back saying check in mail thankyou . most people are basically honest and can believe it or not be trusted to do the right thing ...naturally you have to use your head and try to "read" the buyer but ,,,all in all I don't remember getting ripped off by anyone during the whole 10/11 years on the circuit off an on...except one time and Maby this is the lesson for the day as it were , I was dealing with a "friend of mine and got fried, but that too was partly my fault enough bout that ... most people if given the chance want to be decent and do the right thing... now that I'm getting to the point where I'm ready to start letting some of my babies go to new homes...please keep in mind that I was doing this jewelry and bead work back in the 80's,early 80's, and a lot has changed since then ...so I'm here to learn all over again how to get out there and do this thing!!!
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I and many of my fellow vendors at the Pike Place Market use Square Up. You need a smartphone, they provide a free reader that plugs into your phone and the system works great. They Charge 2.7% which is close to what everyone else pays. there is no per swipe charge and no contract. Use it at will, they only charge you for a percentage of what you take in.
Pay Pal and Intuit have similar systems which didn't work on my phone, Most that use Square up speak highly of it, I recommend it.
I just cancelled my service with Merchant Services. Overall, they weren't bad but the monthly service fees were killing me. Mind you, I wasn't using it that much, virtually all my sales were cash. I don't use a smartphone, so I don't know about the plug-in cardsliders, but if I were to use anything again, I'd go that route. It's also easy to use mobil Paypal now .
Yep, I won't use any service that requires a monthly fee. I only need it during "festival season" and its not like I'm at a festival every weekend. Most of the ones I've looked into charge a fee of around 2.75% per transaction and no monthly fee. One has the option of a monthly fee and a lower per transaction rate - not worth it for the way I'd use it.
Paypal is one of the card reader options I'm looking at. But, they are one of the few that does an in-depth credit check and sets up a commercial account in your name. I'm not sure I want to deal with that.
Paypal mobile is a definite option for folks who use paypal. But, I've had folks at festivals tell me they don't trust paypal and would never use it. I have no idea why - I love paypal and have never had a problem over several years of pretty heavy use. But, there is no telling what gets into people's heads.
I've also never had a problem with Paypal. The Merchant Service I used did suspend any monthly charges when I wasn't "in season" also, but like I said, virtually all my sales were cash. I rarely ever needed to take a credit card.
I think most people who go to these festivals bring cash with them, or certainly there should be nearby access to an ATM. Credit cards are too much of a hassle IMHO to deal with anymore.