Credit cards accept
To be able to accept credit card payments, you must be set up with a credit card processing company or a bank that does its own processing. In general, only larger banks offer their own credit card processing services, but most commercial banks have referral arrangements with processors, so your bank would be a good first step for getting set up as a merchant that accept cards. You can contact processing firms directly too.
See your local yellow page directory under the heading credit card and other plans equipment, supplies, and services. Or a web search using a term line credit card processing services will yield lots of possibilities. All processors whether bank owned or not, charge transaction fees for their service. You will pay a percentage of each credit card sale as well as several other annoyance fees with euphemistic names like interchange fees, statement fees, and equipment fees. It would probably be more honest on the part of the banks and processors if they named these fees something like Âcharges we find we can get away with, but they will not. The percentage fees and annoyance fees do vary, so it would not hurt to shop around.
Unfortunately, though, most lifestyle businesses are not prize customers for processors, so they are not in strong negotiating positions. Processors make their money primarily on the percentage charge for each sale, so large volume customers are best from their perspective. Also, from a processors perspective, larger average sales are better than smaller average sales because the effort involved in a transaction is much the same. You will be compelled to follow rules set forth by the credit card processors. For example, you will have to agree that you will charge no more for credit card sales than for sales by any other payment method.
Also, your customers have the right to contest charges, and, based on certain policies, you will have to accept credit card processors decrees about refunding to customers who demand refunds. In fact, your credit card processor will almost certainly have access to your business checking account and will deduct charge backs as it deems appropriate. On most sales where you do not have a signature and a card swipe, you have almost no chance of winning a credit card dispute if the customer is persistent in challenging the charge. If you want to accept credit cards, you have to accept policies that you may not like; you will have to pay a percentage of each credit sale to a faceless company some where you will have grant that faceless company access to your business checking account; and you will have to pay fees that is annoyance fees.
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