how to take a deposit online?

emsywoo123

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

Do you know, I'm not sure I'd leave it like that. I can imagine various scenarios: Mum says "Oh I'm sorry I meant to withdraw the cash today and haven't managed it yet, I've lost my cheque book, can I drop it round to you tomorrow?" Are you going to walk away at that point?

I'd want to have the money at least 24 hours beforehand ...

On the flip side.........as a parent, I would want to see the person at least at the venue before I handed the rest of the money over, I would never pay 100% in advance for a kids party!

Savvy_Sue

emsywoo123 wrote: »

On the flip side.........as a parent, I would want to see the person at least at the venue before I handed the rest of the money over, I would never pay 100% in advance for a kids party!

:rotfl: fair enough: certainly for a new business, until you'd had friends and friends of friends recommending them!

im-lost

skintsaver wrote: »

Yeah I'm gonna try and stay clear of card machines at the mo

I'll go to the bank on thursday to see about opening a business account with lloyds as they have 18 months free transactions

I wouldnt discount card payments, worldpay has recently launched an excellent new service.

https://mobile.worldpay.com/

free to setup, no monthly fees, no equipment fees etc and fairly low processing fees (65p debit cards or 3.3% for credit cards)

if you say to people you only accept debit cards the most you will be charged is 65p a time.. not a lot to pay for the convenience for both you and your customers.

intuit (the makers quickbooks) is doing similar but you need to pay a setup fee.

think they are trying to capture the small business market before paypal get around to launching their version of it, which im sure will be in the not too distant future

themightyn

Due to the nature of Paypal and trying to get some kind of support out them... i would advise to stay away from Paypal.

We use a company called Payment Sence. They normally charge £50 setup fee. But they waived this for us. They also provided us the virtual terminal and merchant bank for free!. They do charge us £10/month for unlimited transaction processing upto a value of £5000/month. So for deposits, this would be perfect.

The only other catch is you must spend £20/month on the payment processing fees (this is made up through processing cards)

The charge us 19p for debit cards and 1.8% for credit cards.

However bare in mind. This is a professional company where they operate in the standard debit/credit card processing market (i.e separate processor and merchant bank). They claim to be one of the biggest in the UK and apparently every 7 minutes a new company signs up with them.

We have been using them for 6 months and they have been brilliant.

terra_ferma

themightyn wrote: »

Due to the nature of Paypal and trying to get some kind of support out them... i would advise to stay away from Paypal.

We use a company called Payment Sence. They normally charge £50 setup fee. But they waived this for us. They also provided us the virtual terminal and merchant bank for free!. They do charge us £10/month for unlimited transaction processing upto a value of £5000/month. So for deposits, this would be perfect.

The only other catch is you must spend £20/month on the payment processing fees (this is made up through processing cards)

The charge us 19p for debit cards and 1.8% for credit cards.

However bare in mind. This is a professional company where they operate in the standard debit/credit card processing market (i.e separate processor and merchant bank). They claim to be one of the biggest in the UK and apparently every 7 minutes a new company signs up with them.

We have been using them for 6 months and they have been brilliant.

I'm not particularly pro-paypal myself, but it's useful to get started, and much much better in my opinion than using a little-known card processing company. The well-established ones are very expensive, but reliable, and a must for any business that is not just very new or very small.
Personally, for me it's just Paypal or sage/worldpay & sim.

PS the post above sounds a bit like a sales pitch...

skintsaver_2

Thanks all for the advice, I decided to go for a PayPal link on my website because everyone I asked for a deposit asked to pay by that means

Fingers crossed it all takes off now