“I’ve been so busy, I haven’t had a chance to write the check…”
“I was out of town and nowhere near my checkbook…”
Whether the excuses are legit or not, delayed client payments affect your bottom line. So why not offer credit card payment to your clients so you can get your money faster? It’s easier than you think.
One way, which you may have offered to your design clients before, is to send a PayPal invoice. Depending on your client’s comfort level with PayPal, this option is perfectly fine. The client simply clicks the link in the invoice email, pays via PayPal, and the money goes into your PayPal account.
But if your client isn’t comfortable using PayPal, or if you’d like a more professional-looking credit card option, a great solution is to set up a mini shopping cart on your Web site. When it’s payment time, create a Web page (not linked anywhere on your site, of course – just email the URL to the client) detailing the services you provided and containing a “Pay Now” button that links to your cart with the price of the services. It will act just like a “Buy Now” button on your favorite online shop. I like the free cart service from Mal’s, which is easy to set up and use, but many others are available, like Virtual Cart.
You’ll need more than the cart to enable credit card payments – the next step is to link the shopping cart to a merchant account or payment processor, which you’ll have to sign up for. This can be as basic as PayPal or 2checkout.com, or even a full-featured credit card service like Authorize.net. Once you’re signed up, most shopping carts make it easy to hook up with your merchant account, and then clients can start paying you.
It’s surprisingly simple to set all this up, but if you’re feeling low-tech, try a “virtual terminal” credit card service. Available at sites like ProPay and a monthly fee-based service through PayPal, a virtual terminal is a way you can take the client’s credit card info over the phone or fax (never never take credit card numbers by email!) and enter it in on the virtual terminal Web site. Once you enter in the card info and it’s accepted, the transaction is done.
All credit card processing services charge fees. You’ll likely pay a monthly service fee, a small flat fee on each transaction, and a small percentage of each transaction. Research the fees carefully and be sure that they make sense for the volume of business that you do. Also, if you deal with any extremely high cost projects, be sure that choose a service that lets you process large transactions.
For most designers with a regular flow of clients, offering credit card payment is a smart move, as it speeds up the payment process.
No more “the check’s in the mail…”
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I forgot to mention that using ProPay you can process via a virtual terminal (online), using any touch-tone telephone (including cell phones), or via email invoice. PayPal does offer a similar virtual terminal but it costs $20 a month regardless of whether you process or not.
I should also clarify that ProPay’s processing fees are fixed so it’s easy to track how much you’re really paying.
Hmm.I`m using paypal to accept credit card payments but it seems that gg check out is not as good as it has so many problems with the lack of chargeback function.
That was a great article. It comes down to convenience with the customers payment methods.
That was a great article. We are a new business looking to find the fastest way to get paid and easiest for our clients. Thanks.
I have been involved in the payment processing industry for over 4 years now in Canada, working closely with small business owners and I found that there can be a lot of miss leading information on the internet for people, particularly for Canadians.
I do think PayPal is a great starting point for someone who is testing a site out or only processing a few transactions a month, but anyone building a serious business will require ‘true merchant accounts’ for their business. 2Checkout is also good, but their rates are vary high if you plan on having a substantial business volume. The higher your business volume the more important capturing a low discount rate will matter.
Regardless, accepting credit cards is a good thing and will help just about any business make more sales – so if you are not currently accepting some type of credit card processing then paypal might a good place to get your feet wet, since their is no contracts, etc.
If anyone is looking for quality information on how to set-up Canadian Merchant Accounts and payment processing services click here.
Thanks Tara for the blog post and getting the conversation moving forward on this topic!
I like the free cart service from Mal’s, which is easy to set up and use, but many others are available, like Virtual Cart.
- That is the best advice I have seen so far. thanks
personally I would pick 2checkout.com instead of paypal. Using paypal can danger your money since anyone can raise a dispute, which make your paypal account frozen by the vendor.
bfrP0e Good point. I hadn’t tohguht about it quite that way. :)
Do you find more people are inclined to trust a checkout page on a relatively unknown website versus paypal? Do you suggest the use of security badges from your SSL provider or those premium badges such as Truste for Verisign?