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A lot of Makers and Crafters I know often struggle to find a (cheap) way to take credit card payments on site if they sell goods at events/fairs/etc, there are a lot of companies that sell those hardware terminals, but many of them usually seem shady, take huge cuts and require a large monthly balance - maybe this is a solution. A $40 kit from Intuit called the "QuickBooks Credit Card Processing Kit" - available at Staples, Fry's, Amazon, Sam's Club and Office Depot turns your PC into a terminal. A card reader can be connected to the PC so you can just slide the card too. [via] Link. If someone checks this out, let us know.
$40 Credit card processing kit - just add PC
A lot of Makers and Crafters I know often struggle to find a (cheap) way to take credit card payments on site if they sell goods at events/fairs/etc, there are a lot of companies that sell those hardware terminals, but many of them usually seem shady, take huge cuts and require a large monthly balance - maybe this is a solution. A $40 kit from Intuit called the "QuickBooks Credit Card Processing Kit" - available at Staples, Fry's, Amazon, Sam's Club and Office Depot turns your PC into a terminal. A card reader can be connected to the PC so you can just slide the card too. [via] Link. If someone checks this out, let us know.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Feb 23, 2006 02:17 PM
Computers, Toolbox |
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Have been looking at this myself. It would be handy to be a backpack or laptop based retailer but I have two thoughts:
1) Coming up to someone and swiping their credit card into your laptop or homebrew PC may seem kinda cool but it also may set off some red flags for your customer. As in "just the other day I handed this fellow my credit card and he swiped it into his computer...err.. Where's that free credit report site again???"
2) Use paypal. I may be little off on the details but based on my memory its a better deal then Amazon's kit. They will extend to you credit card processing ability via web page or hooked into quickbooks that sends your customer a email with a link in it. They go to the link, put in their credit card info and process the transaction. Paypal being a third party is much more trustworthy, the credit number never touched your systems but the payment does (48-72hrs).
3) The cost from my reading is lower. They do pull a precentage but there isn't a monthly fee. The percentage fee was similar but no monthly charge that I could see, and I don't remember a per card fee either. You can either be a Paypal Preferred member or a business member.
Just my two cents. Would love to see other's comments.
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To jaz9947 and others: I am a writer for the magazine ISO & Agent and I am doing a story about the Intuit kit. I would love to talk to any small business owners who either have this or are in the midst of trying to find a good solution to credit card processing.
I can be reached at brianrogal@hotmail.com or 312-371-4156.
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