Credit card payment machines for small enterprise?

[Michael Kilpatrick]

Can anyone here give any recommendations on credit card payment machines?

For our concert at St Andrew's Street Baptist Church last night, I got
most of the advance sales online through the band website and I use
stripe.com for the integrated card/Google/Applepay gateway - it is
pretty cheap at 62p for a £30 charge on a pair of tickets although it
took me a while to get my head round the PHP/js and so on.

However, not everyone who paid on the door on the night had cash to
hand, and they had to go to my band website to pay on their phone - a
bit messy and time-consuming.

I'm wondering what system I can look at to take direct credit/debit card
payments on the door, something that presumably requires its own SIM or
simply some convenient wi-fi network.

Obviously for use three or four times a year I'm looking for an entirely
transaction-based cost plus whatever the outlay is for the machine.

Michael

[Mark Goodge]

On Sun, 26 Mar 2023 23:07:32 +0100, Michael Kilpatrick

Post by Michael Kilpatrick
I'm wondering what system I can look at to take direct credit/debit card
payments on the door, something that presumably requires its own SIM or
simply some convenient wi-fi network.
Obviously for use three or four times a year I'm looking for an entirely
transaction-based cost plus whatever the outlay is for the machine.

The two main competitors in this space are Zettle (formerly iZettle; the i
was dropped to avoid people mistakenly thinking it's anything to do with
other iThings) and SumUp.

Either will do what you want at a relatively low cost. There are no monthly
fees, just the cost of the device plus transaction fees. The cheapest card
reader units don't need either wifi or a SIM; instead, they connect via
Bluetooth to a phone or tablet. You can get ones that have their own SIM if
you want, but they're probably not cost-effective for your use case.

SumUp's transaction fees are, currently, slightly lower, but Zettle is
probably a bit simpler to set up and use. Having used both, I'd be happy to
recommend either of them. There's a good write-up of the two here:

https://www.mobiletransaction.org/izettle-vs-sumup/

Mark

[Michael Kilpatrick]

Post by Mark Goodge
The two main competitors in this space are Zettle (formerly iZettle; the i
was dropped to avoid people mistakenly thinking it's anything to do with
other iThings) and SumUp.
SumUp's transaction fees are, currently, slightly lower, but Zettle is
probably a bit simpler to set up and use. Having used both, I'd be happy to
https://www.mobiletransaction.org/izettle-vs-sumup/

Thanks, Mark, I'll have a look.

It looks as if you pay around 1.7% on the transactions and those are the
/only/ fees other than the outlay for the device if you're going for the
basic version.

This is slightly lower than the 2.1% for using Stripe for the online sales.

The benefit of the Stripe/etc online sales is that you get an email
address by default with the payment and you can use this to ask the
purchaser for permission to add them to your list for details of future
concerts.

On Saturday, 9 tickets were sold on the door to people with no cash who
had to go to my band website to pay on their phones. The time taken to
faff around doing that was noticeable.

Michael

[Roland Perry]

Post by Michael Kilpatrick
On Saturday, 9 tickets were sold on the door to people with no cash who
had to go to my band website to pay on their phones. The time taken to
faff around doing that was noticeable.

Where was the concert? Would it have been easier to give them a slip of
paper with the address of the nearest ATM.

[David Williams]

Post by Roland Perry

Post by Michael Kilpatrick
On Saturday, 9 tickets were sold on the door to people with no cash
who had to go to my band website to pay on their phones. The time
taken to faff around doing that was noticeable.

Where was the concert? Would it have been easier to give them a slip
of paper with the address of the nearest ATM.

Sometimes it's worth reading the first message in a thread! In

Post by Roland Perry
For our concert at St Andrew's Street Baptist Church last night,

So you ask a good question. With my shaky finger, Google says 22
metres to the ATM at Sainsbury's Local and 30 to the ATM at
Mandela House.

BTW, I'm loving the renewed chat on ely.transport.bridges (uk.railway).
Moving pictures!

[Roland Perry]

Post by David Williams

Post by Roland Perry

Post by Michael Kilpatrick
On Saturday, 9 tickets were sold on the door to people with no cash
who had to go to my band website to pay on their phones. The time
taken to faff around doing that was noticeable.

Where was the concert? Would it have been easier to give them a slip
of paper with the address of the nearest ATM.

Sometimes it's worth reading the first message in a thread!

Or alternatively for people not to over-snip.

Post by David Williams

Post by Roland Perry
For our concert at St Andrew's Street Baptist Church last night,

So you ask a good question. With my shaky finger, Google says 22
metres to the ATM at Sainsbury's Local and 30 to the ATM at
Mandela House.
BTW, I'm loving the renewed chat on ely.transport.bridges (uk.railway).
Moving pictures!

Yes, it was the availability of moving pictures which triggered the
thread.

[tony sayer]

Post by Michael Kilpatrick

Post by Mark Goodge
The two main competitors in this space are Zettle (formerly iZettle; the i
was dropped to avoid people mistakenly thinking it's anything to do with
other iThings) and SumUp.
SumUp's transaction fees are, currently, slightly lower, but Zettle is
probably a bit simpler to set up and use. Having used both, I'd be happy to
https://www.mobiletransaction.org/izettle-vs-sumup/

Thanks, Mark, I'll have a look.
It looks as if you pay around 1.7% on the transactions and those are the
/only/ fees other than the outlay for the device if you're going for the
basic version.
This is slightly lower than the 2.1% for using Stripe for the online sales.
The benefit of the Stripe/etc online sales is that you get an email
address by default with the payment and you can use this to ask the
purchaser for permission to add them to your list for details of future
concerts.
On Saturday, 9 tickets were sold on the door to people with no cash who
had to go to my band website to pay on their phones. The time taken to
faff around doing that was noticeable.
Michael

They have these sumup devices at Toolstation in Clifton road, i believe
a lot of cabbies now use them...


https://www.toolstation.com/search?q=sumup+wifi+card+reader

[Michael Kilpatrick]

Post by Mark Goodge
SumUp's transaction fees are, currently, slightly lower, but Zettle is
probably a bit simpler to set up and use. Having used both, I'd be happy to
https://www.mobiletransaction.org/izettle-vs-sumup/

Not off to a good start here.

I registered for SumUp so that I could play with the app on my Android
phone. I created two items (an adult ticket and a youth ticket for our
next concert in September) as an initial experiment.

The help pages suggest that an "Items" button should appear on the
"Checkout" screen so that you can select items from your list and add
them up rather than enter manually the total sum.

This doesn't work. No Items button/list/whatever appears on the Checkout
screen.

Michael