Merchant Service Ideas for Small Business in Canberra?

Bear in mind that banks offer different rates, for credit cards in particular, depending on your anticipated turnover. So the great rates that medium business M is getting are not the same as those that new startup S will be offered.

Suncorp mobile eftpos machine for 30 bucks a month, 5c for eftpos and .64 percent for cc transactions…..or is that too expensive.

The thing with all these products is that I don’t think they cater for EFTPOS. Your alternatives probably depend a bit on what you’re selling, and the size of the transaction. Given you’re talking about consultations, I’m thinking that your sales are likely reasonably large, and less frequent? I’ve found that for larger purchases, people are quite comfortable with a direct debit – the end result is the same in that they’ve paid using their own money, but it just hasn’t gone via the EFTPOS network.

Certainly look into the options provided for credit card payments though – it seems there are a lot more options you can use there, than taking cash via EFTPOS.

s396 said :

Chat to eWay: http://www.eway.com.au

+1 for eWay. Good bunch of guys who are also a local company.

We use Commbank eftpos, it doesn not seem to be too expencive, also we get the woreless machines as the cords on the hard wired ones seem to break continually. if you do all your business banking with one bank they should cut you a good deal.

General rule is the cheaper it is upfront, the more expensive it is down the road. Paypal is free but they charge a heft fee on each transaction down the road. On the other hand, banks demand more upfront but will not charge so much on each transaction.

For small traders, the former is typically preferred.

Paypal have a credit card reader device and app for iphone. https://www.paypal.com/au/webapps/mpp/credit-card-reader

Not sure if it would be any cheaper than a bank eftpos terminal, but worth a look?

You can open a merchant account and use the bank’s web interface to process transactions. For example, NAB have their “NAB Transact” web portal, and also offer a mobile version for phones.

Square? https://squareup.com/

Not sure if they operate in Australia or not yet though, or whether they can work over the phone. But have a look anyway.

Chat to eWay: http://www.eway.com.au