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Re: Traders and credit cards

Last week I read some comments about trade stands at the Hobson's Bay

>exhibition no longer accepting credit cards and I encountered a similar >problem last weekend at the Canberra exhibition. The trader explained >that the vendor fees had gone up from something like $160 per year to >$220 per month, so they had simply stopped accepting cards.

WTF? 8-) I have a Commbank 'Comm 2000' EFTPOS terminal here which I use for my computer business, and unless those prices you've quoted are for some super-high-tech wireless EFTPOS terminal, they're absurd. Comm Bank charges me A$29.70 per month for the terminal service fee - nowhere near the figures you have quoted. I'd get it cheaper if I'd signed up for a 4-year contract in January this year and accepted a massive fee to cancel the contract or exit when it next expires, but I opted not to do that. 8-)

I would assume the wireless terminals (which I've seen a couple of outlets use at Modelling the Railways of NSW conventions in the past few years) have a higher monthly fee.

While I fully symphathise with the situation, which hits the smaller >traders the hardest, it is not very helpful if you want to buy an >expensive item or many items which add up to a substantial total. I, and >I'm sure a lot of other people, just don't carry around large amounts of >cash. >Is there a solution?

As others have said, using a debit card if the traders can accept those. Most EFTPOS terminals accept debit cards and credit cards as if they are one and the same - it's just the way the bank hosting the buyer's account processes the sale that it different.

Regards,

Craig.

PS. I've cross-posted to rec.models.railroad since I'm curious to get some insight on this issue with regard to exhibitions in the USA. I don't know if the banking rules for EFTPOS, etc. are the same or similar to those here in Australia. How do US model railway/railroad suppliers deal with accepting (or not accepting) payments by credit card at exhibitions?

Reply to
C. Dewick
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That is highly-dependent on sales volume, etc. My computer business is very tiny and I have not had any credit card sales for the last few months, but there are months when I do have a lot of sales which are paid for with credit cards, and the benefit of having the EFTPOS terminal far outweighs having to cop monthly terminal service fees with no sales to offset them from time to time.

Regards,

Craig.

Reply to
C. Dewick

Reply to
Charles Kimbrough

Our business was being charged $44.00 per month for the Merchant facility plus 2.65% per credit card transaction. As we have an on-line business, we were than slapped another $0.50 per transaction for the internet gateway which also has an annual fee of $350 per year.

Needless to say we switched to PayPal for internet transactions and we pay a flat 2.5%... no other fees, and ditched the Westpac merchant facility.

Reply to
Dave

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