You may be a small bakery that has a regular client base or customer base of about 50 people. Maybe you’re a printing shop or a retailer. Whatever the case, there are plenty of great reasons why you may have avoided accepting credit cards to this point in time.
First and foremost, payment processing can be costly, especially for small businesses. When you have to pay $.10 per charge and a certain percentage of the sale price, that can add up to hundreds and even thousands of dollars every single month or even a lot more than that for every single swipe of a credit card.
When you go into many small businesses, you may see handwritten signs that say, “$10 Minimum Purchase for Credit.” What many of these small business owners don’t realize is this is a policy that is prohibited by the major credit card suppliers, Visa and MasterCard.
If the business is caught requiring a minimum purchase in order to use a credit card, they can be fined by Visa or MasterCard in the amount of tens of thousands of dollars. In some cases, small businesses have been fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for these offenses and that has been enough to wipe them out of business altogether.
So, many of these small businesses have decided to avoid the hassle of credit cards altogether. It may seem practical and most of their regular customers don’t seem to mind; that’s because they’re prepared and come in with cash or a check. What about other customers?
What about people who find your business online and wish to purchase something over the phone or through your website?
You may rely on PayPal and other simple processing systems, but that can be a relative inconvenience for your customers (not to mention costly for you). It’s best to have a shopping cart for online purchases and to be able to accept credit cards for your customers who come to your physical brick-and-mortar store or office.
More purchases are being made by credit cards today.
Cash is going the way of the dodo. Even though there are still plenty of people who make most of their purchases using a check or cash, more and more people are relying on credit cards and debit cards. A debit card functions similarly to credit cards, though payment processing centers charge differently for them.
Every single customer who comes in to your store or finds your business online and who generally prefers to use a credit card or debit card and discovers they can’t do that easily or don’t feel as though they are protected online with that purchase is likely going to walk out the door or click away without completing the purchase.
Every time that happens your business is losing revenue.
If that’s not something you want to continue, then you need to rely on a quality payment processing company and begin accepting credit cards for purchases. Yes, it can seem like a greater expense, but you will begin increasing your sales which will more than make up for that issue.
Recent Comments