Cheque guarantee cards

Dilly

What is everyone doing now these have been withdrawn?. This is even more infuriating than not having the cheques

My husband has a small business (sole trader ) and we trade at specialist fairs. The cost of credit card acceptance by the banks is extremely expensive for us and now we are not having cheques guaranteed

Who is taking a chance and still accepting cheques without cards? What kind or reactions are you getting from your customers?

Any info much apprieciated

Dilly

Horace

I accept business cheques without cards. Having no guarantee scheme hasn't affected me at all.

I don't take credit cards other than via paypal on my website. As I am a member of the FSB, I will be looking (in the future as am not ready now) to take credit cards and will be using my member offers via Streamline etc that are offered by the FSB.

paddyrg

Business cheques - make sure you do your own checks on the company before accepting one, treat cheques as any other credit/terms customer, asking for references if needs be.

Savvy_Sue

As a customer, I'd say it depends how much I'm expecting to pay whether it would make a difference to me or not. Let's say you sell widgets, in an assortment of colours.

If I want to buy less than £100 worth of pink widgets, and you don't take credit cards, I'd hope that I could get to a cashpoint to withdraw the cash. I'd expect you to put my pink widgets by for me, although I'd be quite happy if you said you were only willing to do so for an hour, say (to avoid the possibility that I'll see pink widgets cheaper somewhere else and not come back to you, and you could have sold my pink widgets to someone else if you'd known I wasn't coming back).

But if I'm spending more than £100 on pink widgets, I'd honestly expect to be able to use my credit card, or to pay online. I don't know if Horace goes to specialist fairs, but if she had a netbook and a dongle, and offered me the chance to pay by credit card there and then, she'd get my business.

As you'd have had no guarantee from a cheque guarantee card in that situation anyway, as a buyer it doesn't seem that you're much worse off.

But it does depend on the value of each sale.

paulwf

If at all possible try and take cards OP. No one likes the charges but there comes a time when you just have to bite the bullet and pay it. Just like I feel ripped off by charges for rubbish collection and banking but they are business essentials for me.

Cards are now the norm and cheque use is rapidly diminishing. I do take on board it depends on the age of your customers and whether you are B2B etc but I keep seeing traders similar to mine resisting cards to save a little money when you can usually make it back - if not more - by the extra sales gained by offering cards. Also a lot of people spend more when they can just stick it on the card.

By all means have some limitations in place such as a minimum spend (also offer to take cards under that amount but with a 20p surcharge to cover your costs, no one bats an eyelid at paying it) and if you deal in big ticket but low margin items you could only take debit cards.

Savvy_Sue

20p? I've never seen a surcharge of less than £1!

Mistral001

The cheque will be around for a long time yet despite attempts to get rid of it, but looks like the cheque guarantee card is gone for good.

I get about 99% of my money by cheque, but it is mostly business to business or from clients I have met and built up a professional relationship with. Basically if their cheque bounces I know where to get them to pay up (it has only happened once in 14 years).

As Paulwf has said, I think getting card methods of payments set up is just another business cost that you have to bear. I am lucky in that I do not have to have card methods of payment costs, but neither do my competitors.

Perhaps maybe a quick tour of the fair stalls at the next fair to see what others are doing would be useful. Everyone else will be in the same boat. Some are bound to have signs up saying whether they accept cheques or not.

paulwf

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

20p? I've never seen a surcharge of less than £1!

Debit cards cost us around 16p to process so we charge 20p under £5, and we point out the cash machine literally opposite...nearly everyone either happily pays the 20p (sometimes every day, why don't they ever get out cash???) or will make up the transaction to over £5. Real world customers are so different to the average MSE forum user!

I never get places that have some stupidly high minimum transaction like £15 or charge £1 as you mention Sue. Customers don't mind if you are passing on the real cost but these places don't live in the real world and are only harming their business. When we opened our card terminal was delayed for a couple of weeks and people got nasty about it. if a high st business doesn't take cards they can wave goodbye to anybody in their 20's or under it seems.

Horace

Horace never exhibits at specialist fairs (once bitten twice shy), however, I have attended a few mainly large ones like the Autumn Fair at the NEC (did buy one year and was invoiced).

steve1980

Got an iPad? Get the Paypal app.

martindow

Taking cards can increase your turnover. People buy impulsively and even going off to a cash machine can easily lose customers and as has been said they expect to pay by card for even smallish amounts.

If you go to a resonable number of these fairs you could well recoup the costs of taking card payments. You might also get follow up business with phone orders if the card processing company allows customer not present payments.