Accepting credit cards - long and includes some venting

[Katy needs Sustagen!]

We currently accept Visa/MC, personal check (with a copy of the driver's license on file), and of course, cash. To help encourage ppl to pay cash and NOT write a check or use credit card, we offer a small cash discount. It's only $5 and yet most ppl take us up on it. Also, to participate in any of our specials or discounted frequent flyer sessions, they must pay wish cash. Appts paid by credit card or check aren't eligible for any discounts. Works great!

We're about to revamp our practice, and we hope to get away from credit cards altogether and return to a cash-check only system.

Hugs,
~Jyoti

 

[Pompal 09.]

We currently accept Visa/MC, personal check (with a copy of the driver's license on file), and of course, cash. To help encourage ppl to pay cash and NOT write a check or use credit card, we offer a small cash discount. It's only $5 and yet most ppl take us up on it. Also, to participate in any of our specials or discounted frequent flyer sessions, they must pay wish cash. Appts paid by credit card or check aren't eligible for any discounts. Works great!

We're about to revamp our practice, and we hope to get away from credit cards altogether and return to a cash-check only system.

Hugs,
~Jyoti

I don't get it. I accept credit cards as well, but giving a $5 cash discount loses me more money than I pay to the CC company. How much is your CC company charging you Jyoti? On a $55 charge, I don't pay more than $2 (actually closer to $1.75) when all the fees are figured in. If all my clients who paid with CC took me up on an offer to pay with cash and save $5, I would be making less than if I had just accepted their credit card. Over the course of a year, this roughly $3 difference would add up to over $1200 a year that wouldnt be in my pocket.
($3 x 8 CC clients x 52 weeks) Even if half of these clients still charged their session it is over $600 out of my pocket. Some of you guys don't see the forest for the trees. Most businesses accept credit cards and people who use them generally buy more and tip better. Yes, it is a bill you must pay, but what it can do for you and your business!

 

[PuppetMaster]

I work in a spa as an employee. However, there's been some rumbling that they may start charging us for clients who pay by and include a tip on CC. I believe it's somewhere around 4 percent.

If I was an independent contractor, rather than an employee, I could understand their need to include the fee as part of their commission. As I have paid for it as an I.C. in the past when I worked at a salon.

Is it customary to charge your employees for a spa client's use of CCs? And how would you keep all the "books" straight so that the right spa employees are being charged the right amounts?

The owner of the salon I rent from gets 3% per CC transaction from me. And since it's his machine & his headache, that's fine by me.