PayPal Credit Card Reader to Take Payments Offline

PayPal Offline Card Reader + Phone = Money Taken

This looks interesting – and potentially very useful. Is it new? I've certainly not heard about it – but received an email from PayPal this morning.

You buy a card reader from them for $99 then hook it up to your mobile phone which does the authorisation. 2.75% commission. Well, that's not much more than my merchant account commission.

The use I'm thinking of is if you are giving a seminar and want to take payment for something you are selling, it sounds like a quick and easy method to get set up to take payment – either by PayPal or credit card.

Obviously, you have to justify $99 cost – but then there is no monthly rental or anything like that.

It definitely sounds useful to me. Has anyone used it?



Any feedback?

Would it be useful to you?

Malc

 

I think it will save costs if we compare it with what the banks are offering.

 

Yeah - I'm checking what I pay now. I believe it's around 2% for Mastercard/Visa.

But it could be very convenient having a mobile-linked way of authorising payments so worth the extra .75%.

Malc

 

I think banks charge something like yearly fees and as against PayPal will charge you only one time fee of $99.

 

Well, my bank charges a percentage - but you need to give them a certain amount of biz b4 they'll take you on.

From memory I am paying 1.8% on most transactions.

Malc

 

As I am from India the banks charge a % of amount and a certain yearly fees as well. My friend in a cloth shop has card swipe so I know a bit of it.

 

Cool mate. One thing is sure: the banks will get their cut somewhere along the line!

Cheers

Malc

 

Completely true!

 

malcsimm, from which country you are from?

http://squareup.com

Code (markup):

long offered that kind of product. They give away the reader for free. Works on ios or android as well.

 

So, here there is a long discussion about the reader for cards. Most of the customers will have doubts in using this because of the fraud possibility. I'm sure that is a good asset if you do have something to sell and you need to charge the money from a customer. I'm using their Debit Card tho and is a very useful one with a good commission in Spain for cash retrieving and shop purchasing.
I still have doubts about this reader if will have an impact on the market but is a good tool to be taken in consideration

 

Mate- PP are the "fraud meisters"!

They are paranoid about fraud.

I don't think that's a worry for this machine.

:|

Malc

 

I am in the UK

A PP approved machine has authority...

M

 

Malc,
I'm not talking about the PP strictness regarding the fraud, I'm talking about the fact that the customers will not accept so easy to insert their CC into such a machine because of the lack of information regarding it. Is like you're inserting your card into a black hole my 2 cents tho

 

Cool mate. In my experience a bunch of customers trust PayPal. When I added it to my herbal site our sales went up. So it's good to offer as an option.

 

I'm using PayPal from their beginnings, with their up and down as well. I have even their last Debit Card that is working so well, but to see a customer that will pass his Credit Card into your reading machine will be a bit difficult. In this moment I use 2checkout, PayPal and PayPro as payment for our websites and each of them have plus/minus, is good to have more operators because they may fail you from time to time

 

Yeah - it's only if you have the customer on site, as I'm sure you appreciate. So, if you were running a seminar, for example, and selling your course to visitors.



Malc

 

Yes but if I want to sell beer - as I do have now in my mind I'll not be able to use the online platform I'll have to stick with the POS

 

Cool, then the PP would be perfect!