Re: [Coworking] Re: Can we talk about bank fees?
Hi Jacob. yes. we use stripe with cobot, ist just so much easier with them to get paid and resolve issues like refunds and chargebacks that the extra share they take pays of by the time we save so far. For co.up we also use adyen because they do direct debit for europe. We don't integrate with copass yet, why do you ask? Cheers Thilo On Wednesday, December 31, 2014 12:49:25 AM UTC+1, Jacob Sayles wrote: 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 bspr...@thesatelliteinc.com javascript: 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 coworking+...@googlegroups.com javascript:. 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 coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit
Re: [Coworking] Re: Can we talk about bank fees?
I've been looking at Copass more lately and I like what I've been seeing. I can see them having a very positive impact on coworking (and coliving) communities. I have a few conflated big ideas on where this intersects with payments, and a co focused, stripe-like service... but I'm just waking up so I'll try to avoid getting lost in the details before my first cup of coffee. On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 5:50 AM, Thilo Utke th...@upstre.am wrote: Hi Jacob. yes. we use stripe with cobot, ist just so much easier with them to get paid and resolve issues like refunds and chargebacks that the extra share they take pays of by the time we save so far. For co.up we also use adyen because they do direct debit for europe. We don't integrate with copass yet, why do you ask? Cheers Thilo On Wednesday, December 31, 2014 12:49:25 AM UTC+1, Jacob Sayles wrote: 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 bspr...@thesatelliteinc.com 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 coworking+...@googlegroups.com. For more options,
Re: [Coworking] Re: Can we talk about bank fees?
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 bspren...@thesatelliteinc.com 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 coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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 coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
[Coworking] Re: Can we talk about bank fees?
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 coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
[Coworking] Re: Can we talk about bank fees?
Hi all and merry Christmas :) like everyone else said here, the fees are way to high. Kill the contract. I like to share my knowledge from cobot as we deal with a lot of gateways and in general its a blood sucking industry that is mostly way behind the internet age. If you have a low monthly revenue ( 20k) just go with stripe, easy setup, no monthly fees, all int. cards included. As for Braintree, if you use them, keep in mind that you give your money to PayPal, because its the same company. For bigger revenue it starts to make sense to have a deal with a payment processor like authorize.net because you get lower percentage, around 2,1% per transaction but have to pay monthly fixed fees and for certain payment types. A way to save on fees is to get payed by Automated Clearing House (ACH) which uses direct debit and not credit cards. This is very common in europe because vendors don't like to pay credit card fees :) There is also some room for negotiations with payment processors like Adyen or Authorize.net if you are/have a able and patient person to deal with very slow and inflexible institutions. Fraud risk in coworking is very low because people have to be on site to use the service, which is a strong argument to ask for fee reductions. We really would have loved to offer discounted rates through cobot to all spaces that are using us but after months of talking we reached nothing. Really happy if somebody else can offer a angle here. @Jacob really love to here more about your plans. Cheers and merry Christmas On Tuesday, December 23, 2014 4:18:54 PM UTC+1, 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 coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
