Credit Card processing for Glider Clubs

On Oct 11, 9:08 am, chris wrote:
My club like most clubs and commercial seem to be stuck in the 20th
century when it comes to accepting payments from members but more so
ride customers. You know what I mean, checks those old fashioned
things from hundreds of years ago, the things that younger members of
the population never use because credit and debit cards are
everywhere. Cash is difficult to handle without lots of care, worry
and trips to the bank.

Have any other operations found a good way to accept credit card [and
debit card] payments?

A few weeks ago the traveling car wash guys that come to our office
showed me a brick sized terminal unit with mobile/cell service built
in. It could swipe the card, get approval, and print a reciept. It
was called "contractor caddy" - could not find it on-line but it
seemed like a great solution. I don't have any more details on it,
but since it did not require a landline phone it would work good at
the airport. [we don't have much in the way of a business office, just
a hangar.]

Ideally for our club the solution would integrate with QuickBooks to
cut down on the accounting workload. Also low fees are important.

Any good solutions out there?

Chris

Hi Chris,

There's a whole category of devices out there that fit this bill.
You'll find them with a search on things like "Wireless credit card
terminal" or "handheld POS terminal". My firm ncluded these (a more
sophistcated version with access to barcode data) as part of a
solution for a large retail customer that wanted to handle sales at
conventions and such. Retail isn't my area, but I can look into
it.

A quick check suggests that the service requires:

- Up-front payment the device (not cheap - over $500 it seems)
- Monthly mobile service fee (saw them as low as $20/month)
- Transaction fee (seemed to be around 10 cents/transaction)

So, if you're doing 10 transactoins/month, you're looking at about
$2.10/transaction. In reality, people would probably gravitate toward
paying with the credit card if made available, so it might actually be
used more than you expect. Not cheap, but it would probably would
pay for itself if it helped you get only one or two more rides per
month.

P3