If a one-off £29+vat then 1.75% flat fee on all transactions is ”extortionate” for any business, then I’d suggest that business isn’t doing well.
The question is do you wish to pay a small fee for flexibility and ability to offer an alternative payment method for your customers, or are you happy with bank transfers? If it’s the latter, don’t bother with the technology.
what a ridiculous response, you’d never make it in sales with that attitude. And of course you’re totally wrong on so many levels about the health of my business. And even more healthy as I pay absolutely nothing to get paid. I’d rather take my partner out for a good meal than pay to get my money.
I pay to put in cash or cheques above a certain amount/quantity, but online payments are free. But above all, no hassle.
As someone who doesn’t run a business I’d turn that around…
The question is do you have sufficient trouble drumming up business due to the payment methods you accept that it’s worth paying a small fee to offer an alternative payment method. If not then why bother?
What a ridiculous response. I never mentioned anything about your business.
The number of card payments made by consumers increased 146% between 2006 and 2016 from 6.7 billion to 16.4 billion.
Cheques are dying out. Consumer behaviour and expectations are changing. Some businesses may get left behind with attitudes stuck in the past.
that would be a massive win
There is still a privacy gain to be had by spending cash that I’d love to see in a digital world. This may be brought about by digital currencies like monero.
I am really happy to see what I spend my money on - it helps me to make better choices. What I’m absolutely not happy about is anyone else seeing what I spend my money on and I trust monzo to be very careful with my spend data.
If a tradesman is charging over £100 for a job I will demand to pay be card or go elsewhere. If you pay by card as a consumer you have some comeback if anything goes wrong. (i’ll admit though it is a pain in neck having to deal with chargebacks thankfully I only personally have to deal with about 1 or 2 per year and thats with 1000s of transactions)
Then, with any of the tradesmen I’ve known over the years, you’d be quite welcome to go elsewhere and it would be no loss to either side.
When they’re busy enough anyway, turning away customers who want to do things in their own special way is pretty much mandatory.
I’ve done that for a while. If there are two places selling something and one is cash only, I simply never consider using the cash based one… it’s not worth the hassle. There’s a couple of cases like that in this small town.
For big stuff I’ve yet to come across a business that won’t take a faster payments though… although I wouldn’t normally bother with that for smaller stuff (well, I might now Monzo is a thing and it’s so easy).
I would never refuse to use a business if they did not accept card payments except (as someone else stated) it was a big purchase which would affect my refund rights under the Consumer Credit Act. Then I would use a Credit Card or find somewhere which did.
The reliable tradesmen around here would never take cards - you phone them and say, I need you now, and they say I can squeeze you in the month after next…
Why would they pay a premium to a card provider?
All the local trades people I’ve paid via faster payments. The main exception being British Gas for a boiler and cooker service which was paid by card.
This is where a replacement for EMV is needed. Replacing manufacturer’s centralised transaction processing systems with a distributed processing system (a blockchain is an excellent example, just don’t get confused and try and use it as a currency) would allow for an end-run around the incumbents using existing equipment and infrastructure.
Blockchain in it’s current has flaws: not least it’s excessive power consumption.
Don’t mix up Bitcoin with blockchains in general. There is no inherent requirement for a computational proof-of-work for a blockchain to function.
Interesting. I didn’t know that. Thanks 
There a a few based on proof of stake now (e.g. ARK), and etherium are planning to switch to it too.