Get Paid by Credit Card Anywhere With New App

Has your business been considering taking credit cards but you don't know which option you should choose? Many small businesses are concerned about merchant fees for accepting credit, but those fears are often overblown. If you're looking for an easy, mobile solution, there are three options that your business should consider:

Square, Intuit GoPayment and Verifone's PAYware Mobile.

Square's CEO is Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter. It features a free credit card swiper that plugs into your iPhone or Android phones headphone jack. The new app charges 2.75 percent for each swiped transaction and 3.5 percent for each keyed-in transaction.

Intuit GoPayment is made for the iPhone and is a case with a built-in card reader. You can also download the GoPayment software on Blackberry, HTC and Palm smart phones. The reader costs $180 and has a $13 per month fee. The transaction fees are a bit less than Square, at 30 cents each plus 1.7 percent for swiped transactions and 2.7 percent for keyed-n payments.

PAYware Mobile is currently only available for older versions of the iPhone and costs $150, though the new app can be downloaded for the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, in addition to iPod Touches running iOS 4.

The advantage that all of these applications have over going without a credit option is that so many of your customers want to use credit cards. You may not like having to pay the merchant fees, but chances are very good that if you do a cost benefit analysis, you'll find that accepting credit improves your bottom line.

So there are really no more excuses, if you aren't taking plastic, now is the time to do something about it.

Related Resources:

• Intuit Turns Phones Into Credit Card Terminals (technologizer.com)
• Taking Charge: New Credit Card Rules Help Out Americans (FindLaw's Common Law)
• First Part of New Credit Card Laws Take Effect (FindLaw's Common Law)