Is it a great/profitable idea?

Who is your vendor? Would you recommend them?

What is your monthly cost and disc. rate with them?

Do you also use the credit card imprinter?

Do you accept credit card payment for the retainer fee?

If so, is that safe? (because if there is any dispute, Visa/MC can yank that money back from you) - could be any dispute

Is that enough questions? If not, feel free to add your own!

I use Paypal. I'm not sure how much they take...maye 5% of the total cost????

I don't think it's really all THAT much of a service to your clients. They probably expect to pay cash or check, plus you I believe you get hit with a percentage everytime anyway.

Sure, the client may want to rack up miles, but I don't think they would go with someone else just because you don't accept credit cards.

I'd rather save my 5 or 10 percent

Wow! I think we're all beginning to think alike. I was just wondering today about offering credit card services and logged on here to see if I could find a thread from a month or two ago where someone mentioned using an online service similar to PayPal. I can't find the thread in a search here, so if anyone remembers the name of that service, I'd appreciate it if you'd post it here. Thanks.
By the way, Greg. If you're a PPA member, they offer a discounted merchant account through a credit card processing vendor. I checked PayPal's fees and it appears they charge 2.9% of your monthly transactions up to $3000, and 2.5% for $3K-$10K per month (plus 30 cents per transaction.)
Christopher

Hola guys, I've been thinking about offering this kind of service but in all honesty I've had 0 clients ask for this service in the 3 years that I've been in business. So it's really made me wonder about it's impact on my business & the need for it.
I'd be more then happy to keep as much of the profits as possible.

This is really weird to me... and I am sure Nathan will have more enlightening things to say about this...

We have had credit card service basically since the beginning... alot of people around here uses their credit cards for this stuff.

Wonder what the reason for this is...

Insight anyone?

We use PayPal, but only offer it if clients ask about using a credit card. So far it has been great!

1. Great idea if it helps you land sales (probably not the case for wedding photography decisions though), but not really profitable unless you are landing a bunch of clients that will only book you if you accpet credit cards. If you are going to dabble, I would highly recommend PayPal (no setup fee, very low rates).

2. I think the PayPal numbers above are correct -- basically less than 3% + 30¢ per transaction. The good news is that you can plop the money into a PayPal money market (2.54% or something similar right now), so the fee is actually offset somewhat. Plus, depending on you business structure, there are few interest-bearing accounts available and the ones that are out there have pitiful interest rates.

3. No

4. Yes

5. Probably not. Hopefully your contracts are solid enough that their shenanegans would topple under legal pressure, however, not ever having to deal with it would be great too. That said, we've never had this problem before, though we have had a client bounce a $2500+ check before.

Same here. Well almost. I've been in business for about 2.5 years and started accepting CCs about a year ago. I use Authorize.net I don't use the slider though just the online virtual terminal. One note however, according to my merchant account policy I can not accept wedding deposits. Apparently there have been too many chargebacks from brides that changed their mind and then called their cc company. So I take checks for deposits. Almost all of my portrait and headshot customers however use credit cards. Plus all of my online print sales from my website are with credit cards. I pay like 2.9% plus about 20-50 per month depending on my charges.

To me it's a natural service in today's world. I think customers expect you to accept credit cards even if they plan to pay via check or cash.

I didn't have good luck with Paypal. Most people either never heard of it, didn't understand it or just didn't want to use it. I still have my account in case someone request it.

My 2 cents

Alan wrote: "One note however, according to my merchant account policy I can not accept wedding deposits. Apparently there have been too many chargebacks from brides that changed their mind and then called their cc company. So I take checks for deposits."

Thanks Alan! This is exactly what I wanted to hear and you're the first one to confirm my concern about deposits. From my understanding, if a bride tells her Visa carrier that she did not recieve any service/product from her purchase (retainer charged to her CC), then the carrier will yank that money from the merchant (you/me). Doesn't matter what's on the signed contract - the Visa people will never look at the contract. So it is safe NOT to accept retainer fees as credit card payment.

Any one else have a different take on this?

I accept credit cards. I dont push them using them nor do I bring it up unless they ask. I dont want something as little as that to keep them from going with me. Some people are putting their whole wedding on a card and dont have $7,000 in their account so I have ran many of plastic in my career.