Credit Card Payments

[Trinity]

I have looked into getting POS credit card facility when I am at craft fairs but I can't really justify the cost. It may or may not encourage people to buy, but when I was at a craft fair recently I noticed a lady who had a lap-top and she was getting people to buy via her website, then paying through paypal.

I know it is a bit of a long road to get payment and not sure if the customer would go through the hassle, but she did manage to get sales and she was certain that if she didn't have the laptop then she would not have got the sales.

Anyway, I have a laptop but then you are not always guarnteed internet access but what I was thinking of was getting a phone that had internet access and then getting customers to log on to my site and then they could buy via paypal there. Do you think it would work, and that way all I need to fork out is the the cost of the phone and the cost of the connection to the interet (which I will need to look into for costs).

And would you use this method if you were at craft fair?

[Chell]

Do a search on here for Paypal pro in threads. Its £20 per month, I think knotjustjigs and a few others use it.


ETA: http://www.mumszone.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=43428

[trogette]

the last show I did I took a few payments on nochex through the shop, even though people had to wait for me to sort things out a couple of times they waited and paid. If you're going to do it, it helps to have the laptop really accessible and it can run a slideshow or a video while you're not actually taking payments.

[Bag Crazy]

I have a protx account and can take payments over the phone. If at a show I can use the laptop and process the payments through my virtual terminal at protx. If there is not a connection, I have a back up of the old fashioned swipe card machine with the paper chits that i can use, this is provided through streamline where i hold my merchant account.

Protx costs me £20 a month and then I pay a transaction percentage to streamline for processing the payment.

It works well for me, if you have any questions then just ask. It's kind of confusing at first!

Caroline

[Kelly Prosser]

Hi Trinity,

We use both at the baby shows,

We have a laptop set up with wasp softwear, so we scan each object as it is sold which then prints out a receit, we then have the PDQ to take the card payments, works well for us and is quick!

Kelly Prosser

[ann0024]

I have a protx account and can take payments over the phone. If at a show I can use the laptop and process the payments through my virtual terminal at protx. If there is not a connection, I have a back up of the old fashioned swipe card machine with the paper chits that i can use, this is provided through streamline where i hold my merchant account.

Protx costs me £20 a month and then I pay a transaction percentage to streamline for processing the payment.

It works well for me, if you have any questions then just ask. It's kind of confusing at first!

Caroline

I use protx (Sagepay) but wasn't aware I could take payments over the phone. How does that work?

[blush]

thanks for reminding about the manulal machine for streamline!
I have an event to go where dancers are looking to order their shoes for an upcoming summer ball.
At first I was going to use paypal virtual terminal via my laptop and my usb stick.
But I could just take my streamline hand machine, then customers are getting a receipt also. But would you send these off or would you just input them on your machine when you are back in the shop as if it was a telephone order?

[Snippa]

I never thought of using my laptop for purchases made at a craft fair. That's a great idea. One question I have though. If a person doesn't have a Paypal account can they make a payment without setting up an account?

[Miranda]

I would find a laptop and payment online too time consuming.

I bought a hand held machine from Chip and Pin Solutions http://www.chipandpinsolutions.co.uk/

It was 2 or 3 years ago, and cost about £500. The only other charge we pay is £9 a month for the O2 sim card to dial up. It's quick, secure and very familiar to the customers, being the kind of machine they'd be asked to use in eg a restaurant. We also use it in the office for telephone orders, and replaced our rented desk top machine which cost us £20 a month rental, and we'd had since the year dot before online payments when our website used to encrypt the customers card details, we'd print them off and manually key in every order - what a pain!

Anyhow, our little machine certainly paid for itself in the first 6-9 months.

[Miranda]

thanks for reminding about the manulal machine for streamline!
I have an event to go where dancers are looking to order their shoes for an upcoming summer ball.
At first I was going to use paypal virtual terminal via my laptop and my usb stick.
But I could just take my streamline hand machine, then customers are getting a receipt also. But would you send these off or would you just input them on your machine when you are back in the shop as if it was a telephone order?

If you have a machine in the shop, if it's like ours was (an Ingenico T45) then I think I read that you can plug it into a mains socket at the show, take all the orders, it'll capture the transactions but won't be able to dial up, then finish the show and unplug, then take back to the office and it will then dial up and clear the transactions when you do the banking.

[madison12]

I am in the process of applying for a mobile payment processing terminal. I am using 123 send which is a streamline facility. They have good rates and it can be used at craft fairs etc...

If you require any further info let me know and i will try to help.
Rachel.