Credit Cards for Business

Ahhhh. Okay. I’m back again.

I have been considering getting back to blogging, but I keep waiting for odd particulars to fall into place. And yet so much has happened. Important only to me, I realize.

We have avoided accepting credit cards for our business for years. We have manged with checks and PayPal. But we also have lots of money that has not been collected. We have known we should look into it, but feared the fees. Today I spoke with a Vantiv rep, who took about thirty minutes telling me about it. We ran very rough numbers for what it would cost. Then I looked at our expenses for the past year with voluntary customer payments via PayPal. Though it is a complete different set-up, with no monthly fees or costs other than the 30 cent transaction fee and the percentage, it would certainly ensure that we are paid. Perhaps only prior customers who prefer to send a check would be allowed to pay by check. I am not fond of the fees it would cost us, but I am pretty certain it would be worth it. So I just looked through the outstanding accounts for the past year and ran some numbers, trying to learn how it might look for our situation.

I just looked again at Square as an option and compared the costs of PayPal, Square, and Vantiv for a $100 order and a $49.85 order. We are hit hard because our payments must be manually entered. Still, I think I am ready to make it happen.

More research to be done.