Hi 
I'm fairly new to the site and I searched for a thread about this and didn't find one. So I was wondering if any of you home bakers accept credit cards? I recently got quick books and they give me a free 2 month trial for the merchant services. Do any of you think this is a good or bad idea? I was thinking I might as well see how it goes and I can cancel before the 2 month period without any fees. They also sent me a nifty card swiper that hooks up to the computer through usb. Thoughts?
I use paypal too but I've had quite a few requests for credit cards. I haven't used it yet I just got it 3 days ago. I will let you all know how it goes when I do use it. It is linked directly into my business checking account.
I use paypal, but am now using PowerPay which is what we use at our dance studio. I will still use paypal for online orders of basic & kit occasion cakes and dessert items, but if they come to the gallery and order or order a large event cake I will then swipe their card (which is much cheaper than paypal).
The positives of paypal is that I have a paypal debit card and the minute the transaction processes I have my money available to use, I have to wait 24 to 72 hours to get my funds from PowerPay (usually is next day unless transaction was batched on a Friday or weekend). The down side of paypal is the fee that is quite high, plus they hold 5% of the funds for 90 days. And if you always use them, you never see that money again, you will always have money in reserve, unavailable to you until you discontinue using their service then they will release the funds on the release schedule, so it trickles back in. I have had as much as $750 in reserve unavailable for me to touch. Since going with PowerPay my transactions with paypal have slowed significantly and now my reserve balance is under $300, but for me that is still too big of a chunk of my money that they have hostage...LOL!
I use Paypal...I realize the fees are higher but I just write it off as an expense. Its not a bad trade for the ease of use, and yep for the Paypal debit card which I use to make almost all my business purchases. It is great because I don't really have to have a seperate bank account from my family...(I'm a licensed home baker), just use my Paypal account.
I wasn't aware of the "reserve" part. Hmmm.... I have never seen any money laid aside??? I've taken my acct down to zero before.
Do you subscribe to virtual terminal or any of their other pro pay gateway items, that was their justification as to why they charged that. They were suppose to remove that when I realized that I didn't need virtual terminal and could use just the pay now buttons (something that wasn't available back when I started with Paypal). They removed the $30 a month auto charge but didn't remove the reserve hold. I have contacted them numerous times and each time am told that they should have removed that restriction and they will take care of it, but alas, a year has passed since I removed the VT and they still are taking 5% in 90 day reserve. The reason they do the reserve is VT and other gateway options are more suseptable to fraud and charge backs than the pay now buttons or people paying via their own paypal account...
They don't put funds in the reserve, however if someone uses funds from their own paypal account, but that is very rare, most use their credit cards and don't log into their paypal account.
For another business I had, I used ProPay.com...I liked it because the business I had was a mobile business. They give you instructions for inputting a credit card over a telephone (even your cell) or through your computer. What was nice about this company is that they have several levels of participation based upon your estimated dollar volume per month with reduced rates as you go up in level. There was also a nice chart to help you get started. Each level has it's own yearly price fee plus the per swipe charges.
HTH
Paul & Peter
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