Thilo, Barbara, you two run cards using your service, correct? Do you integrate with Copass?
On Fri, Dec 26, 2014 at 3:12 AM, Barbara Sprenger < [email protected]> wrote: > Hi Jensen, > We had this same issue at first. (But 10%!!!???) And it also turned out > that our bank "owned" our data! Took over a year to get out from under > them. We are now paying about 1.9% TOTAL for bankcard processing, and we're > happy to recommend our service to anyone. Take all your costs of credit > card processing (discount fee, interchange fee, bankcard fees, etc.) -- > don't worry about breaking them apart. Look at the total gross that you > processed through the credit card company, the total net into your pocket. > Take the difference and divide by the gross. That's the true cost of credit > card processing for you and the only important number. > > There are a number of entities involved in this. Don't get suckered into > believing that a company that does all of this for you is going to save you > money. They all cost more. The entities in a credit card transaction are: > 1) The online gateway. This will typically be Authorize.net or an > expensive all-in-one like Stripe. (Authorize charges $10/mo. for this.) > 2) Your credit card processor. This is the entity you may have the most > contact with and the one that probably sold you the service. Or the one > that gives you no service but charges you a lot anyway. They take a small, > but significant, nick off every transaction. This is typically where the > variability in your costs comes from. > 3) The processor's bank. Yep, they're there, too. (But their fees may be > hidden from you and show up in #2.) > 4) The credit card vault. This holds securely all of your member credit > cards. You may use Authorize, which charges another $10/mo. for this. With > our management software (DeskWorks), we use Spreedly because they make it > easy to draw on the card to go into different accounts, and we don't charge > for the vault service (we pay for it). > 5) Don't forget the credit card companies. If someone has a card with > points or miles or other benefits, you're paying for it in a higher > percentage. > 6) Your bank. They may not take a visible percentage, but they're probably > taking the "float". Meaning they hold your money for an extra day. > > When you add all of this up, you should be able to be under 2.5% total > cost, dropping as you get bigger and have more track record with your > processor. And you should have a processor that is always instantly > available to you and helpful. Holler if you want the recommendation to the > one we're using. > > Barbara > > > > On Tuesday, December 23, 2014 3:18:54 PM UTC, Jensen Yancey wrote: >> >> I don't know about everyone else, but since I've opened a coworking >> office, one of the most mysterious and difficult-to-wrap-my-head-around >> concepts has been why the hell am I getting charged so much for accepting >> credit cards and where is it all going. In our scramble to get open in >> time, we signed on with First Data, Wells Fargo recommended them so what >> could go wrong? This month, we billed $1435 through first data, from that, >> we were charged a $48.55 bankcard discount fee, a $23.87 Bankcard >> interchange fee, and a 53.89 Bankcard Fee. First data is incredibly >> unhelpful, but I've managed to figure out that the discount fee is just >> what they charge us, the interchange fee is what the credit card charges >> us, but what the hell is the Bankcard fee? Also, most beguilingly of all, >> It's been slowly going down while our other two fees have been going up. >> >> I knew it would be a little pricy, but it seems absolutely insane that >> we're paying nearly 10% of our revenue out to these companies. It's going >> to cost us $500 to break the contract and I'm totally on board with doing >> it, but is there a much better solution? >> > -- > Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Coworking" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
