Some Progress, Some Static

The only work done on pouches last night was taking Tuesday's set off the molds and molding four more. My excuse is that I had a new toy to play with. More natter and pictures on my personal blog, once I'm done here.
On the other hand, I did decide on and sign up for (relatively) cheap credit card processing.


A couple people suggested Square (squareup.com).  I wanted to go with Square, I really really did. But there were just too many comments about bad customer service - the only way to contact them is via e-mail/web form, and wait for return e-mail. Some people have managed to find a phone number, but it just goes to an answering machine and it sounds like calls aren't answered.


That's ungood behavior.



I also saw some comments about needing to re-swipe cards more often, and the annoyance of the little square Square reader spinning in the audio jack, but it was the customer service question that pushed me over the edge.


So I (reluctantly) looked at Intuit's GoPayment service. (http://payments.intuit.com/products/basic-payment-solutions/mobile-credit-card-processing.jsp)


Both Square and Intuit (on the low-volume - less than $1K/month in charges) offer free readers, no monthly/annual fees, and almost identical rates. But Intuit has their customer service phone number(s) on their website, reasonably easy to find. I think I saw that they prefer GoPayment customers to use chat, but that's still reasonably-live.  Intuit won.


Intuit charges a flat 2.7% for swiped transactions (3.7% for keyed in). That's higher than than what traditional merchant accounts are paying (AFAIK), but that's the tradeoff for no other overhead fees. To compare, PayPal charges 2.2% plus 30 cents per transaction, so depending on the total of the charge the rates are reasonably comparable. 


So, for face-to-face transactions, Otter Necessities can now accept credit cards again.