SumUp
SumUp is super easy to use and has quick processing.
Square
Square is super easy to use and covers every business type and also has a Kitchen Display System for restaurants.
Zettle
Zettle gives you everything you need to take payments without any fuss.
Credit card processing operates in three separate processes:
● Authorizations
● Settlement
● Financing
Each of these steps includes moving the payment details and authorization of a cardholder from one party to another. The prime objective of the processing period of credit cards is to decide whether a transaction has the requisite funds to be completed. The average length of transactions with an EMV chip credit card is 15 seconds.
● The cardholder shows his card (or other reliable methods) to a merchant in exchange for goods or services. The request could originate in a brick-and-mortar store, an eCommerce website gateway, via mobile or in-app payment acceptance, from a credit card terminal or point of sale device.
● The merchant sends a request to their payment processor for payment authorization.
● Transactions are submitted by the payment processor to the relevant card organization, ultimately reaching the issuing bank.
● Authorization requests, including parameters such as CVV, AVS validity and expiration date, are made to the issuing bank.
● The issuing bank accepts the transaction or rejects it. If the cardholder’s account has been closed or expired, if a payment is past due or other reasons, purchases may be denied for insufficient funds or available credit.
● Then the issuing bank sends back the approval (or rejection) status to the card association, merchant bank and finally to the merchant along the line.
That’s the method for credit card authorization in a nutshell.
● Merchants submit their payment processor batches of approved transactions.
● The payment processor transfers the specifics of the transaction to the card associations that communicate the required debits in their network with the issuing banks.
● The issuing bank charges the amount of the transactions to the cardholder’s account.
● The issuing bank then transfers to the merchant bank the necessary funds for the transactions, minus interchange fees.
● In the merchant account, the merchant bank deposits funds.
That’s the simpler payment method for credit cards. It takes a matter of seconds for authorization. Settlement and financing that used to take days are now almost always done overnight, helping you quickly get your cash.
You may want to know the ins and outs of companies that handle credit cards if your company wishes to accept payments by credit card.
Fortunately, it does not have to be difficult to select the right credit card processing company. The following factors should be considered while choosing a credit card processing company:
Depending on the type of business you operate, the transaction amount, the overall cost and other factors, after all, you may want to find what is the cheapest credit card processing for small business? Credit card processing companies offer a range of fee and cost structures.
There may be costs associated with the processing of transactions that are fixed, such as exchanges where card brand networks set prices. Per-transaction costs, incidental costs, flat fees, monthly maintenance fees and other equipment and regulatory enforcement charges can also occur. In addition, fee structures differ depending on whether you are conducting in-person (card present) or online (card not present) transactions.
Take the time to consider the overall cost of payment processing, understanding that the least costly service in the short term is not always the right choice. When choosing low-cost providers, some trade-offs and risks should factor into every decision.
Companies must ask questions about integration when choosing a credit card processing company to decide how simple the setup process would be. It should be a fast and painless operation, but it is important to ask questions about how long it takes to install and how long it will take for your company to be up and running on their system. Any delay you face costs your company money and the ability to obtain another client. Long, complex configuration procedures is a risk an organisation does not have to take.
Today, the customer expects choice, including how they prefer to pay. Companies must inquire about the payment forms they support when forming a partnership with a credit card processing company. Ensuring that all major debit and credit cards are part of that list is critical. You would want to inquire about the opportunity to accept prepaid and gift cards to the same degree, so you can completely appeal to your customers with your payment systems.
It is an interesting question to ask what relationships your future credit card processing company has developed to decide what other advantages they might add to your own relationship. This involves knowing with which sponsor banks they operate so that you can leverage their industry ties to help expand the network of your own organisation. A more connected credit card processing company means there are more chances that they will be able to help your business prosper in the long term.
Speaking of experience and knowledge, don’t forget the customer service factor when deciding what credit card processing company is right for your business. When issues or questions occur, ask their team how often they will be open. Learn how their team works with you to ensure that they provide the level of support necessary for your company. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to credit card processing, but each business owner should agree that in a payment relationship, solid customer service can go a long way.
An added value for companies may be additional services offered by credit card processing companies. Fully customisable loyalty programmes based on the needs of the company allow businesses to connect with their customers, motivate them to return and attract new customers.
These systems operate by offering the customer the option of signing up when their transaction is processed for a loyalty program. The loyalty program will tap into the purchases of the customer once the customer signs in, and provide rewards based on this information.
The right credit card processing company offers a simple, customer-focused solution that helps businesses to stabilize cash flow. Fees for credit card processing should not be an eye-popping line item on the profit and loss statement of a business each year.
Want to know how credit card processing works?……. check out this guide from BancardSales.
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Square is one of the biggest names in the credit card processing companies, offering its services in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia and Japan to more than 2 million small business merchants and individual sellers.
Square is the best low-fee credit card processing service because it does not charge any of the monthly or annual maintenance fees for the account that other businesses charge, such as statement, payment gateway and approval fees for PCI. Its flat-rate transaction charges are what you pay. It also doesn’t have a chargeback fee, which is uncommon, even for companies that process mobile credit cards.
Square is also the best mobile credit card processing app since it provides a complete suite of point-of-sale features, although it is free, and can be expanded with add-on services and integrations. It also operates on phones and tablets, both Apple and Android.
While it is mainly known as a mobile credit card processing company, Square also provides brick-and-mortar and online businesses with processing solutions. Here are some of the features it offers.
1. Free Point-of-Sale Software:
Square Point of Sale (formerly Square Register), the company’s payments app, is compatible with both Apple and Android smartphones and tablets. To help you run your business, it’s free to download and includes a full range of POS features.
Here are a few of the things that it can do:
● Accept debit and credit cards, cash, paper checks, mobile wallets, and gift cards
● Open and split tabs
● Set cashback and taxes
● Issuing refunds
● Prompt customers for tips with tip amounts proposed
● Managing consumer data and reviews
● Receipts for print, email or document
● Sending invoices and accepting online credit card payments
● To track quantities in real-time, use the inventory management feature to
● Present sales details and build reports
● Integrate the accounting software and e-commerce platform with third-party business solutions
2. Card On File:
Square’s Card on File feature allows you (with their permission!) to safely and securely store the card details of your customers in the Square system. Since Square hosts and secures the data for your customers, you are still PCI compliant. Without having to take out their cards, also at the POS, clients will pay for orders. This feature also works (using the APIs) for Square Invoices and the Virtual Terminal as well as eCommerce. For this feature, you’ll pay the regular keyed entry fee. I like that Square makes it very simple to store card information across multiple channels, but also offers security layers.
3. Easy Configuration and Setup
It just takes a couple of minutes for Square’s processing services to sign up online. All it takes is some fundamental data about you and your business. There are no credit checks, and no records, such as the previous processing statements or marketing materials, need to be sent. It easily approves applications, and you can start processing, often in as little as five minutes, the same day you apply.
Remember that you will pay the higher, keyed-in rate before you receive your card reader. Your free Square card reader will take up to 10 days to arrive, but you can buy one at a local electronics or office supplies store if you need it in a hurry.
4. Invoicing:
You can use the built-in tools of Square to submit invoices or connect up an integration with a third party. The invoicing tools of Square help one-off and ongoing invoices as well as payments for instalments. More significantly, by offering a wide variety of models, Square offers support with contract formation. Based on your company’s details, you can set up default invoice templates and attach all kinds of files, including purchase orders, images, and more.
5. Square Online Checkout:
Without even having a full eCommerce platform, Square Online Checkout is a flexible way of taking payments from your shoppers, sponsors, or clients. We see this as an attempt from Square to compete with the PayPal button’s ease and versatility. You may add a Square Online Checkout button, via a link, social media message, and even a text, to an existing web page. Although the seller needs an account to use buttons or links from Square Online Checkout, the buyer does not.
6. Offline Mode:
This feature gives businesses that do not operate out of brick-and-mortar stores 100 per cent of the time a huge advantage. Square’s offline mode allows for safe swiped card payments while you are not linked to the internet, whether you are at a farmers market or a craft fair.
When you are reconnected, transactions are simply handled automatically. Even better, this feature doesn’t have an extra fee.
Keep in mind that offline mode only operates for swiped magstripe cards. If the payment does not register upon reconnection to the internet, companies are responsible for the cost of the transaction.
The core of the app’s simplicity is Square’s dashboard. In one sleek, centralised scheme, all you need to handle your payments are kept and displayed. You can soon learn to use Square’s platform with ease, even if you don’t have previous experience with a POS system.
The dashboard is uncrowded, provides a very user-friendly interface, and can be fully personalised. According to their preferences, users can change settings and delete settings they don’t need to avoid clutter.
It is absolutely free to use Square POS. The only charges are for processing card payments or adding additional features. Each new Square account also comes with a free magstripe card reader to accept credit card payments that connect to iOS or Android smartphones and tablets. The free reader arrives in the mail fairly soon, in my experience.
However, as it is a more safe purchase, I suggest buying a card reader that has an EMV / chip reader. These readers start at $49, while eligible transactions have interest-free payment plans available.
Square’s pricing, overall, is highly transparent and consistent. It has flat-rate, pay-as-you-go processing fees for software items and month-to-month billing. Contracts or long-term agreements do not exist. At any time, add or modify any add-on subscriptions.
Processing Fees for Square POS Payment:
● Transaction fee at a flat rate: 2.6 per cent + 10 cents per transaction
● Invoices: 2.9 per cent per transaction plus 30 cents
● Commerce sales: 2.9 per cent per transaction plus 30 cents
● Recurring transactions for billing and card-on-file: 3,5 percent + 15 cents per transaction
● Payments keyed-in: 3.5 percent + 15 cents per transaction
● Volume discounts: For every company processing over $250,000 in credit card transactions, Square will build personalised pricing packages
Square POS Monthly Fees:
● Point-of-sale app: Free- $60 a month Pro POS plans available
● E-Commerce / Online Ordering: Free
● Payroll: 34 dollars a month plus 5 dollars an employee
● Marketing: 15 dollars and higher per month
● Loyalty program: $45 and higher per month
I hope you found this review article of Square helpful and that you would be able to determine whether or not Square is right for your business.
I believe that what they offer is the best product on the market and can really benefit any kind of business. And the best thing is that to see how it is going to work for you, and you start using it for free.
Zettle (Now part of PayPal) is a leading European card payment processing service that combines a mobile app and a portable card reader to allow card payments to be accepted quick and easy by individuals or companies. It also offers backend services that will enable all users to create their virtual store, display the history of transactions and evaluate their sales.
As the initial costs are low, the cost of using Zettle is very low. There are no monthly contracts, and for each sale, users only have to pay a transaction fee. You can download the Zettle app for free, and it’s compatible with all popular smartphones and tablets for iOS and Android.
Businesses simply need to connect via Bluetooth technology to the card payment terminal and require either mobile data or a WIFI link to start processing payments anywhere.
In this Zettle review, I have listed the features, ease of use and pricing plan of the software.
Since the mobile card reader allows you to accept payments almost anywhere, a lot of other payment and business management features are offered by the Zettle Go app. Combine these two, and you have a streamlined small business credit card processing system that will cater to most small businesses and will provide you with all the functions that you need to process customer payments. Some of these features are discussed below.
This feature allows you to easily upload all of your items, including a picture, description and attribute identification, into the online store. It is incredibly easy to find the items on the app when you need to make a sale once you have your library setup, which means you won’t spend precious customer time looking for a particular item.
Based on the report results, you will monitor your sales and identify customer trends and inventory output to adjust your product offerings and sales strategy. By knowing the needs of clients and tailoring the inventory to them, this function helps to make better business decisions and improve productivity.
Within three days after receiving payment, you will receive your money. Depending on your sales results, you will have the capacity to determine how much money you would like to contribute to your account on a regular or monthly basis.
It has the potential to provide your whole team with access so that everyone has the chance to log in and accept payments. Business owners are entitled to limit access to reporting and sales information to staff members.
It includes all major credit cards, as well as alternative payment options such as PayPal Here, Apple and Samsung Pay.
It makes it extremely easy to accept payments on the go. The reader’s compact nature means that it can be carried anywhere you need to go, whilst the sturdy construction ensures that it can withstand continuous transport.
This feature helps companies to accept payments quickly. Simply connect the card reader through Bluetooth technology to your phone or tablet, and you can process payments within seconds.
Nearly anyone can use it. Both have software explicitly designed for their respective OS, which implies a native user experience regardless of what sort of device you are using.
It only takes 1-2 hours of charging time to use up to 8 hours or 100 transactions. The specially made iZettle Dock also allows businesses to pay the card reader as it fits perfectly on the professional-looking display dock.
With all of its products and services operating perfectly on their own, one of the best things about Zettle is its ease of use. Join them all together, and you’ve got a fine hardware and software suite that gels.
Inside the Zettle dashboard, being able to monitor all your company activities gets all into one location, enabling you to track all aspects of your daily workload within a single interface.
So you can find everything works together to improve your productivity if you have iZettle Go and even the iZettle Pro software. With the iZettle card reader, top it all off, and you have a formidable set of products that don’t take much effort to master.
Monthly fees: None
Card reader cost: £29 + VAT
Transaction fee: 1.75%
Remote transaction fee: 2.5%
Refunds: Free
Chargeback fee: Up to £250 chargebacks/month covered for free
Zettle payments are one of the lowest around compared with similar payment options. For all card reader transactions, the transaction fee is set at a flat rate of 1.75 per cent, and there are no monthly charges or hidden costs. Refunds are easy to process, and you get refunded for the processing cost as well. As long as you follow best practise for taking card payments, chargeback insurance is included for up to £250 a month.
At just £ 29 + VAT, the card reader itself is brilliant value for the budget-conscious. And, since no contractual commitments exist,’ early termination fees’ are not applicable. There are transaction limits for iZettle, but that’s unlikely to affect most business accounts where £200,000 is the daily limit. The lowest possible transaction sum is £ 1. If your company earns over £10,000 per month in card payments, iZettle suggests that you take a look at their custom rate plans.
iZettle also provides the iZettle Pro for £ 39 a month an iPad for those in the hospitality industry. With a lower card processing fee of 1.25 per cent, the card reader stays at the same price of £ 29 + VAT.
Zettle and its dynamic, user-friendly set of options for improving your business have a lot to like. You can find that every form of outlet, from food and drink or retail establishments to health and fitness, or those in the service industries, has something to offer.
The Zettle’s Go app’s daily usability is fantastic, and this is a high-powered solution that can be used on a mobile device as well. It allows you the opportunity, even outside of normal business hours, to keep working and processing payments.
Meanwhile, Zettle Pro is a unique POS system based on apps that is super sophisticated while remaining simple to use. Add in that tremendous little Zettle two card reader plus a very competitive pricing structure, and your business has an extremely attractive choice.
SumUp is Europe’s premier mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) company. SumUp is an EMV (Europay, Mastercard, and Visa) and PCI-DSS accredited to ensure that payments are handled in compliance with the highest security requirements. SumUp launched five years ago and set up payment services to bring change to the industry. SumUp has come up with a unique device that enables small and medium merchants to accept card payments anywhere. It’s all in one device that accepts all sorts of cards.
SumUp ‘s independent, end-to-end payment platform is the world’s first completely accredited EMV mPOS system to include the entire payment process. Be it card terminals, Android and iOS mobile applications, payment processing portal, risk and anti-fraud solutions. It is also the only mPOS provider to design and build EMV card terminals.
SumUp Air Card Reader is the safest card payment system. It has obtained complete certification from several regulatory bodies, including PCI PTS V4.0 Certified, Mastercard Pay Transfer, Visa Pay Wave, American Express Expresspay MasterCard TQM MasterCard TIP, Visa ADVT certified Visa Ready, SRED EMV Level 1 & Level 2 certificates. This makes it the best credit card machine for small business.
The SumUp mobile app is available for iPhones, iPads and Android devices. Its features are more basic than those provided by some of its competitors, such as Square, but here are some of the things you can do with it:
● Allow payment of credit and debit cards, including Apple Pay and Google Pay.
● Issue refunds
● Print, e-mail or text receipts
● Create a list of products
● Add and change sales tax rates
● Track real-time transactions and payments
● Send text SMS messages to customers with payment links
SumUp only provides one card reader, but you can use it to accept magstripe, chip, and contactless credit and debit cards as well as mobile wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay. It connects to your smartphone or tablet through Bluetooth, and the company says you can process more than 500 transactions at a single charge. It costs $19, which is the most affordable EMV / NFC card reader we’ve ever seen. Shipping is easy, which is a good thing, and it takes between two and three business days for the unit to arrive.
If you need to run a non-present card transaction, such as when a customer sends you a credit card number over the phone or by email, you can use the SumUp Virtual Terminal. This function is not automatically included with your account – you may need to contact the company and fill out an application that requests some extra details about your business before you can set it up. Still, there is no setup charge and no monthly fee if your request is accepted.
You can find your account details and a dashboard that gives you a graphical overview of your transactions when you access your SumUp account online. You can see your sales revenue by day or week, by amount or number of transactions, and by payment form (credit card, debit card, cash). It also reveals the most recent transaction to your bank account. Your sales history can be filtered and downloaded, making it easy to search for specific transactions. It also allows you to drill down to the details of sales for each transaction.
Load all of your products in the app, then add photos, prices, and descriptions. You can create groups called “Shelves” for similar products to make everything easier to sort through. There’s no feature to count. At the moment, Square is the only mPOS offering this particular feature.
You can add employees to your account from your SumUp account page. Each employee has his or her own login details and can accept credit card payments and view his or her sales history. They can not access your account, add or arrange products, or add a different bank account – all payments are transferred to your bank account. You can review the sales history of all employees connected to your account from your account.
Multiple tax rate:
You may add multiple tax rates for various types of products and categories. When you enter the details of the item, you have the option to link it to the tax rate. Multiple tax rates may also be applied. You can change the tax settings from within the app, which is important for your mobile phone.
It’s not hard to see between the sleek website and the glowing customer feedback that SumUp is a very user-friendly app. Within a matter of days, a business owner can sign up for SumUp and start processing payments. And the clean interface of the app, combined with the helpful guides of the Support Center, makes it very easy to learn how to leverage all the features of SumUp.
SumUp charges 2.65 per cent of all magstripe, chip card, and contactless payments made using the SumUp credit card reader (virtual terminal transactions cost 2.95 per cent + $0.15). Currently, the per-transaction fee of SumUp is cheaper than that of Square (2.75%) and PayPal Here (2.70%).
The SumUp card reader will cost you $19, which is much cheaper than other card readers that accept chip cards and contactless payment methods (it costs $49 for Square’s chip card reader and contactless payments).
When dealing with SumUp, those are the only real costs to remember. To use the SumUp app, there is no signup fee, PCI compliance fee, statement fee, payout fee or fee. However, if you encounter a chargeback, you will need to pay a $10 fee. You can use SumUp month-to-month concerning contracts and cancel at any time for no additional fee.
There is one thing that will set SumUp apart from the rest of the mPOS providers, especially for companies that often handle international business: it is available in 16 countries at the time of writing. If you contact the company in advance, you will be able to process payments in the other companies where SumUp works. Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States.
So if you do conventions, trade shows, and other events abroad or within your country, SumUp is the right choice for your business.
ShopKeep is now Lightspeed POS (S-Series) which is an iPad and Android POS application for retail companies, restaurants, bars, franchises and quick-serve businesses. When used on an iPad or Android tablet device, the POS software provides a touch screen interface which enables users to add and remove orders from wish lists. To add items to the shopping cart and promote inventory management, users can also scan barcodes using barcode scanner hardware. SKU management, re-order management, and the ability to manually add a new inventory item is other inventory management and inventory monitoring features within the POS software.
Lightspeed POS app includes a built-in register to keep track of checks and payments. Users can maintain several registers of payments and separate, merge or pass payments between various accounts. Using the point of sale system, businesses can accept all payment forms, including cash, credit cards, gift cards, and more, and payment processing can be carried out online or offline. Cash drawer control, pricing at the time of purchase, and link with POS hardware such as a receipt printer or card reader are other POS features.
Lightspeed also provides management resources for workers, including the ability to control work hours for employees, measure payroll and clock in and out. Lightspeed integrates with various marketing tools, and lets users generate reports and analyse business data to identify patterns.
The easy-to-use, out-of-the-box platform of Lightspeed POS, combined with some powerful features, makes it easier for small businesses to maintain their payments while retaining the clients they have acquired.
Here are a few of the essential features offered to users by Lightspeed POS.
The Back Office of Lightspeed POSis an online service where users manage all the system components of their business. The Back Office organises all of your business information, coupled with real-time reporting, into an easy-to-navigate dashboard.
You can gain insight into your sales figures, clients, and inventory levels from this dashboard. It also provides several reports that can give you insight into your sales and help you handle them. You can check your peak sales time, your workers have reported best-selling products, and how many hours.
The features of the register are comprehensive: ringing up products, adding modifiers, taking payments, dividing tenders, fast discounting (item and order level), easy returns and refunds. The in-app functionality, as described before, is very intuitive and does not require any extra knowledge or training. It’s also a smooth process to set up your iPad button layout, controlled from your back office.
This pos framework supports an unlimited number of items, and you can use its inventory management software to arrange them by department, category or supplier. You can track the products that go into a finished product using the raw materials feature, which enables restaurants to track inventory at the level of ingredients. When items are low, you can set the system to alert you. Although it can store contact information from the vendor, this system does not allow you to create purchase orders.
In the software, you can obtain customer contact details and use it to email their receipts to your customers. If you would like to run email marketing campaigns, and integration for Mailchimp is available.
You can create employee profiles, assign permissions for individual registries, and determine who can access back-office features. Employees can clock in and out using the Lightspeed POS register app, and you can use its monitoring features to see when your organisation is busy and slow to optimise the schedules of your workers.
Notably, one of Lightspeed POS most obvious issues has recently been fixed: the inability to set various tax rates. You can now apply special tax rates to particular products with the new Tax Groups feature, in addition to being able to set a default tax rate for your merchandise.
Currently, Lightspeed POS has multi-location capabilities and the business is looking to improve that role in the near future. One of the latest changes to Lightspeed POS includes the ability to view all of your stores on one parent website; you can view each individual store by clicking a drop-down box.
Lightspeed POS has the ability, but only via Clover Mini, Clover Flex, and Clover Station devices, to take offline credit payments. The device should also be connected to a network even if the device cannot be linked to the internet.
It is quick and easy to use Lightspeed POS Back Office, the centralised centre from which merchants can handle their entire business. New users are driven by a setup where they are taught how to use the system as a whole and its features, removing the need in the future to contact customer service.
Its features are self-explanatory in general, and its multiple pages are all easily navigable. Concerning its integrations, the one area where Lightspeed POS could enhance its ease of use is that it helps users manage all aspects of their business.
Lightspeed POS facilitates integration with the QuickBooks accounting solution, the MailChimp email marketing platform and the BigCommerce e-commerce solution. But that is, unfortunately, where the list of third-party integrations ends, according to Lightspeed POS own FAQ page.
A variety of its own incorporation add-ons, such as Lightspeed POS eCommerce and Lightspeed POS Gift Cards, are provided by Lightspeed POS.
Lightspeed POS, without any contract, works on a pay-as-you-go monthly subscription basis. They do not offer fixed-rate pricing, however, and pricing varies from business to business.
You need to either contact them for a quote or answer some questions online to find out how much you can pay. There is a lack of clarity in this form of pricing strategy, and small businesses that want a general understanding of how much they can expect to pay before talking to a salesman who is trying to close a deal can be off-putting.
However, if they manage less than $5,000 a month, Lightspeed POS provides a free plan to small businesses with a single venue, single register, and single employee member. Unlimited inventory and sales reporting are included in the free plan.
Lightspeed POS might very well be the right option for you, depending on what you want from a POS system. If you depend heavily on other business owners’ opinions and experiences, then the highly positive Lightspeed POS Reviews can guide you toward opting for this system. However, you may want to look elsewhere if you’re looking for POS software that is highly specific to your business. Plus, the quote-based pricing of Lightspeed POS can trigger a lot of confusion in your shopping experience, especially if you are the type of company owner who values transparency.
Lightspeed POS comes with upsides and downsides, just like every other POS system out there, so before committing, make sure to carefully weigh all your options.
