There are two ways that we’ve found to take credit cards without having to jump through the hoops of setting up a merchant account.
Paypal
The first and simplest is using Paypal. The challenge with Paypal is that you either need payment integration built-in your booking calendar (which is technically complex), or you need to send a payment request email to your customers. This is fine, but it doesn’t enable you to take payment at the point of sale. Lots of service providers we know will use Paypal payment requests only with customers they’ve known for a while, or in advance of providing a treatment.
Square
The second, and *way* more interesting way to accept credit cards without a merchant account is still not widely available (yet). It’s called Square, and is brought to us by the inventor of Twitter, Jack Dorsey.
How Square Works
Square allows you to plug a little credit-card swiper thingy (I’m gonna call them swipeys :) ) into the audio jack of your iPhone, iPod touch, computer, or Blackberry. You download a program that lets you then process credit cards and issue receipts over email.
And the best part is that you don’t need a merchant account – you pay Square the transaction fees. Getting set up will be a lot quicker than if you wanted to accept credit cards at point of sale today.
Here’s a video of Square in action:
The New York Times has a good interview with Dorsey about Square, where he says they’ll be giving away the swipeys for free!
You can read more about Square and sign up to get a swipey on their website.
[Update Jan 13] Amit writes more about using Square, and includes some screenshots of the iPhone app:
2 Responses to “How to Accept Credit Cards Without a Merchant Account”