Does anybody use iZettle for taking payments ? 13 December 2012 at 11:44AM in Small biz MoneySaving 112 replies 99.9K views

Acc72

Hi All,

Does anybody have any experience of using iZettle to take payments from customers ?

What has your experience been ?

Doing a search on this site there are comments about not being able to take Mastercard payments, but their website says that you can as they are EMV (Europay, Matercard and Visa approved) - may be recent approval ?

How have your customers responded ?

The website says "no lengthy contracts" - what does this mean, that there is effectively no contract ?

Are there any other similar companies / systems out there ?


Thanks in advance for any comments.

davec1960

I looked at it but ended up signing with Worldpay.
Similar thread her http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=4341155

Acc72

davec1960 wrote: »

I looked at it but ended up signing with Worldpay.
Similar thread her http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=4341155

Thanks Dave - can I ask, why did you go for Worldpay rather than iZettle ?

morg_monster

Myself and my mum both have one, we are both small craft sellers and don't sell at events often enough to make it worth paying for a merchant account or anything with a monthly or yearly cost. The bulk of our experience comes from using it at the open studio events my mum does. At the end of November she had a week long one and it got quite a lot of use. Basically we both have found it easy to use and very convenient (neither of us have business or merchant accounts so this type of thing is the only option for us). Bear in mind we both got ours in the beta period so the card reader was free.

Mastercard is no problem. The problem arises with Visa, you can't use it normally, there's a fairly convoluted method where a text is sent to the customer's phone, they click a link to go to a website... blah blah, I don't really know as we just said we only took Mastercard.

The customers we used it with have mainly been affluent people between the ages of 40-70 I would say. They have been very happy with it however most of them know my mum and I personally so that does give them some reassurance!

There are no contracts, correct. You just pay a small percentage of each transaction. The money comes into your account about 4-5 days after the transaction.

Other options - there seem to be more and more every day. So far none seem to have cracked the Visa problem. Most seem to charge similarly to izettle. I don't think there'll be room in the market eventually for all of them but for now the industry seems to be booming! Here are some I've found in my research over the past months:

Payleven (their current offering is similar to izettle but importantly they claim to have the first genuine chip and pin phone cardreader coming which will be able to take visa no problem)
mPowa (they require a merchant account but will set up one for you if you don't already have one and charge slightly more)
Worldpay (for android and blackberry only currently)
SumUp (you need to have a business bank account to get this one and also I believe you have to send them an authorised copy of your passport (banks usually charge for this))
Paypal Here (coming soon)
Intuit

davec1960

Acc72 wrote: »

Thanks Dave - can I ask, why did you go for Worldpay rather than iZettle ?

Taking payment by visa seemed to be complicated but the biggest problem to me was asking customers to put their CC into a device plugged into my mobile and asking them to enter their pin into my phone.

Worldpay uses a separate card reader and looks much more professional (IMHO)

HiMyNameIsLauren

Fully concur with Dave - depending on what industry you're in and the type of customer you have, you should be very wary about using iZettle. "Wait, you want me to give you my card and you're going to connect it to your phone" - you wouldn't believe how many times I've had this from my customers, which is very disheartening as I was trialing it to get away from using a card processing company (cardsave) that's just too expensive for me. But, turns out when compared to iZettle, I'm getting more transactions with a professional looking terminal.

System

Just ordered one! I own a boat cleaning business so I am often out and about, on site when finalizing with a customer and taking payment. It seems ideal. I think it helps for customers and makes the whole operation a bit more professional.

patman99

There is now a device that is in use in the States (and is coming to the UK soon) that plugs into the earphone socket on an Android mobile (or 3g tablet) and will read the chip on a chip'n'pin card. I believe it is called 'Squared' or something like that.

Also, there is 'Pingit' for Barclays account holders, but this requires each party to have a Pingit app on their phone linked to a bank account (I think for sending payment you don't need a Barclays account either).

System

davec1960 wrote: »

Taking payment by visa seemed to be complicated but the biggest problem to me was asking customers to put their CC into a device plugged into my mobile and asking them to enter their pin into my phone.

Customer never puts their pin into your phone using iZettle. They sign for it. iZettle are not allowed to use pin due to EU rules etc. So im very surprised you were asking customers to input their pin no, I would have been apprehensive too!

davec1960

beany_bot wrote: »

Customer never puts their pin into your phone using iZettle. They sign for it. iZettle are not allowed to use pin due to EU rules etc. So im very surprised you were asking customers to input their pin no, I would have been apprehensive too!

My mistake, but it didn't change my view that it could look a bit dodgy to some customers.

chalkie99

We have just completed a sign up with WorldPay and it is many times better than iZettle,

They supply a chip and pin terminal which looks just like any other that customers are used to in shops. It connects wirelessly (through Bluetooth) to an Android 'phone so the customer does not handle your phone and, of course, you have the security of chip and pin and the widely known name of WorldPay.

In addition you can take customer not present sales over the 'phone via a web interface.

We were set up and had our terminal in 5 days and it really seems to render the others redundant.

https://mobile.worldpay.com/