Anyone used a card reader for a carboot sale?

bluezone

We normally do a few carboot over the summer every year but due to covid-19 was thinking some people may not want to carry cash with them? I was wondering about investing in a card reader (izettle is doing an offer for £19 at the minute). Has anyone (Joe public) taken card payments at a carboot sale? Also would I need to declare it to HMRC if its just 2nd hand stuff? 

Spinybif

A friend of ours does craft fairs, she uses card reader, vastly increased the money she took.  If 2nd hand own goods no need to declare.  However, if you buy in goods, new or 2nd hand, that is trading and would need to be included on tax form.

soolin

I use SumUP for all my vintage and sci fi fairs, many buyers now at conventions etc seem to expect to pay by card. I do very very few car boots but think I used it once or twice at one in the past. However, I know some car booters and they say that more and more sellers are offering card facilities- but it all depends on how good the signal is in the field where you want to use it.

As above if you are selling your own things only then it does not need to be declared, if you are buying to resell then 2nd hand clothes are one category, from my volunteer experience in the past, that DWP or HMRC  (although most of the ones I talked to were turned in to DWP by friends and family) seem to catch more often. 

emmbrook

Another option is to offer PayPal so long as they use friends and family - plenty of people at Antique fairs do this.

bluezone

Thankyou, I might offer PayPal for now and see how that goes 😁

soolin

I have offered PayPal in the past at fairs etc but not at car boots for a couple of reasons. Firstly at fairs and conventions people are perhaps slightly more honest, the scI fi conventions particularly are ticket holder only and Where traders had issues (and they were rarely malicious just accidental) you could always track down the person and get it rectified. Even explaining the friends and family payment many buyers did still use a full PayPal payment by accident or by not understanding  how it worked and indoors in the calm it was easy to sort out. 

At a car boot , well at least the ones I’ve done, there were a lot of thieves and scammers, if you get paid there by full PayPal you are standing in a field being harassed by other buyers trying to log into your PayPal to check the payment while buyer has already grabbed their stuff and left. It’s too late to sort out any problems and even if you did refuse the payment you’ve already paid full PayPal fees that you won’t get back. Even Sum Up can be risky as whilst you are waiting for a signal other buyers might be lifting stuff from your stall behind your back! But at least it is quicker and you don’t have to mess about logging in to accounts on your phone to double check how they paid.