I recently stopped down at the Cherry Creek farmers market here in Denver and noticed a couple things. One, there are way more vendors that have setup shop at this event than in years past. And two, very few of the businesses there were setup to accept credit cards. This surprised me. The amount of lost revenue that these small businesses were losing out on must have been substantial.
I spoke with one farmer that had peaches and tomatoes and asked him why he did not take cards. His response was pretty standard from what I have heard other merchants say: accepting credit cards is too expensive. While this misconception of the payment processing industry seems to have dwindled in recent years there are still business owners out there that are hesitant to sign up for a merchant account. This may be because of a bad experience with a shady processor in the past or simply hearing horror stories from friends, family, and other business owners.
The truth of the matter though is that we have come out of the dark ages of processing’s past. Where tiered pricing and hidden fees were rampant and the “norm”. Host Merchant Services believes in modern transparent pricing based on the interchange plus model. Anyone who takes cards has to pay the interchange rates set by the big boys, Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express. No way around this. With that being said, our belief is that we should provide a fair price relative to the merchant’s volume, average ticket amount, and type of business.
But I digress, back to my conversation with the farmer at the booth. He was familiar with other “four sided” mobile payment processing solutions but was hesitant to go that route because of the one rate, flat pricing structure. He had researched enough online to know that there are hundreds of rates for all the various classifications of cards and that one rate for all them just didn’t add up.
He was not aware that companies like HMS existed with the same mobile swiper solution but also a fair pricing structure. Our solution is powered by HMSPay for iPhone and Android operating system. The handy mobile swiper turns your smart phone into a go anywhere POS. Some of the features that it performs are:
- Authorize and capture charges immediately
- Authorize and reserve funds immediately
- Email receipts
- Capture relevant data
- Void transactions as needed
- Process credits and refunds
With these features your customer get the same experience they are used to in brick and mortar locations and the convenience and speed of paying via card. Setup and installation of HMSPay is a 30-second, two-step process. Visit your appropriate app store on your phone to download the application and attach the device. To get setup with a merchant account contact our friendly payment experts today at 877-517-4678 or simply fill out the form on the right and we will get in touch with you.
