What service are you using? What machine do you process through? Anyone use Quickbooks Pro and using their merchant service? What kind of fees are you paying? Please give me advise so I dont make any mistakes I'll regret.

Tnx

I don't own a cake business, but I owned another small business up until about 3 months ago. I went through Bank of America Merchant Services. My fees were this:

$25/ month service charge and
1.79% of each transaction and
25 cents per swipe

I was happy with Bank of America, before that I used another company (I can't for the life of me remember the name now, but the name was initials and the first was a "c") they were horrible!! I fought for 6 months to cancel my account. They kept screwing up my deposits. And I liked Quickbooks Pro, much better than Microsoft Money for managing my books. Good luck! Let me know if you have other questions . . . and I can look up the name of that company if you would like to know!

Cassie,

thanks for the info. I will be using quickbooks pro software the the prices they are offering are:

$17.95/mth
2.44% key entered transaction fee
23 cents per transaction

I will think of B of A since they are my bank and it may make things easy.

We use Total Merchant Services and LOVE them! I don't have a statement in front of me, so I am not sure of the fees, but I do believe it is 14 cent per transaction. We have a wireless terminal, so we can take it anywhere like a cell phone, which is a little more.

We went with them because they do not required a contract or a credit check. A friend went with a company that required a four-year contract and did a credit check!

I pay $3/month service fee
$.22 transaction fee and I will have to look up the % that I pay.

I'm not sure what you are looking for but believe it or not I got my service from a company on EBAY. I will never pay more than $3/month. I haven't used it in a year but it's such a small amount that I keep it just in case.

I went through Advanced Payment Services. No set up fee, the customer service was awesome. Of course everybody and their brother is calling me wanting me to switch.

the nice thing too about BofA, the money deposits into your account the next day. sounds like there is a big difference in some of the fees, hopefully you can get a good deal somewhere!!

i don't know if you have a retail store, or a home bakery, or what, but i use paypal to accept credit cards. obviously it wouldn't work if you sell supplies and such at a store, but for my biz its quite effective. they can use any credit card to pay you at no additional fee, i can email them an invoice or they can pay online through my website. i love it! the fee is about 3%, but there's no monthly fee at all. its free to transfer the funds to your regular bank account, or you can get a debit card (free) to make purchases directly from your pay pal account. i highly recommend paypal!

I worked for a credit card processing company for 8 years. I was a Trainer after working Customer Service for a number of years, so I really do know this stuff. No matter what the up front fees are, READ THE FINE PRINT on the contract, usually on the back. Be aware of all the fees they have.

You're going to pay different percentages for each type of card and how it was entered into your credit card terminal/computer. Did you 'settle' the transaction on time; meaning, did it sit in your terminal/computer longer than 24 hours after receiving an approval, etc? Corporate cards are charged a higher % but are not always easy to identify, but you can't refuse them if you accept CCs.

There are so many rules/regulations to understand, but I would never go into business and not accept CCs. Raise your prices a wee bit to cover costs if you have to, but you will bring in so much more business when you accept them.

Im not in business yet, but I have always thought that paypal would be the best way to go to accept c.c

I haven't done it for my cakes, but I used to accept credit cars when I sold Creative Memories. I had ProPay. I don't remember the fees, and I did get a discount through CM, but I never had a problem with it.

When I become legal and need to accept cards, I'll probably do either ProPay again or PayPal.

http://www.propay.com/

I use PayPal for both eBay and my cake business. If the customer wants to pay with a credit card they will have to go thru the huge major hassel of setting up a paypal account lol which most I'm sure already have due to eBay being as highly used as it is. I just started selling on eBay today lol. Listed my first two items and haven't gotten any bids yet but listed Pay Pal as the only payment option and with Pay Pal they can use their Credit Cards or like I do, they can attach their bank account to their paypal account which will then draw funds from the bank. The bank account connected to Pay Pal remains empty until I have to pay for something on eBay at which time I deposit the money into the account and proceed with Pay Pal... it doesn't charge much to accept the credit card payments very little I believe. I've received money via CC payments before, had to change from personal account to a business account, and it started charging I think it's 1.09% I'm not 100% sure on that but you can get a list of fees by visiting www.paypal.com and clicking all the way at the bottom and click fees.

Although I think Paypal is good with Ebay, I would think it would be a hassle giving out your payment email address. I think it would be more professional just to take the credit card number over the phone or in person at a tasting. I also think you are at the mercy of waiting for them to post a payment to you, whereas if you have possession of the card or number you can process it immediately. I understand if you are only processing a few orders here or there it would make sense to use a no fee service like Paypal.

Oh now see I didn't know you didn't have to have paypal account to pay by cc that's great to know! Thanks!!!!