Many merchants provide services on the go and look to the ability to process credit cards away from the office. With the advantages of wireless credit card processing there does come the expense as well, right? It all depends on how you look at it.
Some businesses can make the move to accept credit cards with a wireless merchant account and see enough in savings to pay for the service and keep some of their hard earned money in the bank. We can look at a few factors to help you weigh the cost and benefits.
Why go wireless? The advantages are numerous to having the credit card authorized at the point of sale;
- Authorization at the point of sale – By getting approval at the point of sale you are avoiding the possibility of going back to your office and having to deal with a decline. Many times after you have provided your services.
- Reduce chargebacks – Having the card electronically authorized (swiped) and the cardholders signature on the receipt are two of the strongest ways to avoid future cardholder disputes.
- PCI Compliance – Storing cardholders information for later use poses a multitude of security risks for your business. Just one security breach could be enough to put a small business out of business.
- Cost savings – Probably one of the most important reasons for you is the money you can save in credit card fees by swiping the card as opposed to key entered credit card transactions. By swiping a credit card transaction you can save more then 1/2 percent on each transaction!
The cost of a wireless merchant account
- Wireless Credit Card Equipment – The main cost with going wireless is usually the credit card processing equipment. All the major credit card equipment makers offer a variety of wireless terminals that range in price from a few hundred to over a thousand dollars. Some merchant service providers will offer free terminals but this may come with contracts and minimums.
We have been please with the Spectra terminal by chargeanywhere.com They have been reliable in the field and we can get a merchant mobile for under $500.
- Monthly fees – With a wireless unit you will have monthly Gateway and Transaction fees. The gateway can range from $10 to $50 a month depending on the application and the per transaction fee can range from $0.05 to $0.20 per transaction.
Does it save me money?
SMS offers wireless gateway on GPRS for $19.95 a month and $0.10 per transaction. We will use this number for our calculations.
If you have an average sale of $100 and did $10,000 in credit card sales a month.
$10.00 Transaction Fee (100 Transactions at $0.10ea)
$19.95 monthly fee
$29.95 Total Monthly Wireless Fee
$50.00 Savings on credit card processing ($10k x .5%(estimated savings)
As you can see by this example you can process wirelessly for much less. The service pays for itself.
Southeastern Merchant Systems provides wireless services through chargeanywhere.com Contact us today if you would like to analyze your potential savings by making the move to wireless credit card processing.
