Dose any of the members use any of the mobile chip and pin readers to process their payments form a clinets or customers. As been asked by one or two as they offered pay straight away if i could take a card. And just wondered if it would be agood move.
Looked into this once and the card processing office said to think it through cause using the card brings on certain 'protections' and 'merchant responsibilities' as well as fees. If you still wanted to do this, could you have them log into the internet and pay to your paypal account and you confirm (using your smart phone) the completion of the transfer before you say goodbye.
I use quick books for our billing and they have an iphone app and that's whay I use
Check out PayPal Here, $59.00 for reader. Use your smartphone to send confirmation -invoice etc
I dislike paypal with a passion and would never give them my business. Besides that: The 800 lb gorilla is Square which is what I use. Regular mag stripe reader is free and the cut they take is quite acceptable to me. Their chip and pin reader is $40 IIRC and has a battery people complain goes dead. So I don't have one. I know all my customers so the reduced protection doesn't bother me. You can also email customers invoices that they can fill in the card info like they are buying anything online and then you don't get dinged for the hand entered fee. Square's system works very smooth and doesn't crash or do anything annoying. Intuit also has a system which is similar and might integrate with Quickbooks if you use it. If I had to do it over I might consider these guys: http://www.ware-everpay.com/ they seem to have a little lower rates and a little faster cash flow. The nice thing (check before you sign up) is that these methods cost nothing to set up if you have a smart phone, and cost nothing if you don't use them monthly. You don't even have to tell customers you have them unless you want to.
I second the thought about PayPal. I set up to use it years ago and within ten minutes I got the spam email asking to confirm my account numbers. Chucked the mess and never looked back.
I'm going to mention Square, too. I don't have my own experience with it. The lady I help with her beehives uses it when she sells her lotions and that at events. I haven't heard any complaints from her