mobile card readers for taking payments - identifying who made the payment?

soupdog

My mountaineering organisation owns several mountain huts where members can stay for £8 a night. Currently members fill in a bit of paper saying how many nights they stayed and send that to the treasurer with  the payment or a note saying they have paid by BACS, together with their membership number so we know who has paid what.
It's difficult to keep track of payments this way though as members often forget.

I am considering getting a card reader for each hut, something like the Sumup 3G&printer or the Sumup Air which would work over wifi and allow members to pay their hut fees immediately when they leave the hut by entering the amount they are paying and using their card (we cannot use readers that need a mobile phone or tablet as some huts have no 4G signal and anyway I couldn't buy a phone to leave unattended in the hut just to work a card reader)

Does anyone know if these type of devices allow payees to enter some sort of ID (eg their membership number) as well as a payment amount so that we could eventually identify which payment came from which person?

I have researched several manufacturers but their web sites are usually just gushing handwaving about how wonderful their device is and details of how they work are thin on the ground. (SumUp's support seems particularly bad) .

Hence my question here in case anyone has any experience of them .

MSE_James

You'd probably be better sticking up QR codes which people can scan to pay multiples of £8 from their own devices, perhaps via a service such as GoCardless (they have a paylinks feature) or Paypal.

simongregson

If you set up a sumup account rather than buy card readers you can get it to generate qr codes for each hut and leave them stuck on the wall. As an added bonus they don't currently charge fees on qr code payments, though that may change. You can set an amount for the qr code or leave it open so they enter the amount. They don't need an account, it is done on a mobile website but would need to use their phone data to access the payment page. Not sure what can be done with references, if they can't input one I guess you could ask them to send you a text.

Chino

simongregson said:

it is done on a mobile website but would need to use their phone data to access the payment page.

But the OP said:

soupdog said:

we cannot use readers that need a mobile phone or tablet as some huts have no 4G signal

penners324

Zettle let's you add a comment on the payment, SumUp doesn't 

penners324

Zettle also does the QR code thing mentioned above

simongregson

Chino said:

simongregson said:

it is done on a mobile website but would need to use their phone data to access the payment page.

But the OP said:

soupdog said:

we cannot use readers that need a mobile phone or tablet as some huts have no 4G signal

Any card reader type solution will require some sort of internet connection, maybe the huts have WiFi? If not the existing system is probably the best that can be done.

MSE_James

You could have printed slips with the QR code that people could take away with them to make payment when they return to civilisation / 4G

soupdog

MSE_James said:

You'd probably be better sticking up QR codes which people can scan to pay multiples of £8 from their own devices, perhaps via a service such as GoCardless (they have a paylinks feature) or Paypal.

 Thanks, that's interesting. We use Gocardless for our DD subs so that might work. I'll look into it