Just like we have started to see with the Taxi industry there has been some exciting new developments around banking facilities. Everyone by now knows PayPal and the services they offer, but there is now so much more available for businesses.
A lot of services have been available in the United States for some time, but now services are being released it seems on a weekly basis.
Today we will just concentrate on merchant facilities for Credit and Debit cards.
For a business to accept credit or debit cards you use to require a EFTPOS machine like the one on the left, or a BPOINT facility. You would pay a monthly fee for ‘merchant’ service plus a rental fee for the device itself. Before you even get started pricing could be up to $50 per month.
We have had some competition in Australia over the years. These companies however utilised the same technology and similar pricing methods. Perigon One even got really excited when Commonwealth came out with ‘Albert’, and to be honest it was exciting……… for a couple of weeks.
PayPal
They have had a merchant facility for some time and also offer a hardware device that is portable. We have seen these around, especially at local markets although from our experience we have had quite a few issues when we were trialling it.
Square
We have been monitoring this for some time, and we are pretty excited that it is now avaliable within Australia. Not only do they offer the ‘Merchant’ service but also have some additional add-ons that businesses may find useful. The Xero integration is out of this world.
I am sure that there are plenty more services available, and more will come. It is only good news, as we finally now have more competition in this space that will only reduce costs of operating our business.
If you are looking at getting a new facility, it is really important to look at contract terms, especially with new entrants into the market.
If you need any assistance, or if you have any other Merchant Facilities that you have had experience with – good or bad, we would love to hear from you.
