Farmers Market payment systems

I wonder for people who accept credit transactions at markets, what systems are you using.

For a couple of years I’ve used the Square card reader that you pop into your iphone jack. I find that, yes it stinks they take a cut, but the amount of market sales I’ve made really increased. The only trick is when I haven’t attended market and sent staff on their own, I either have to send my phone or forgo offering credit. I considered adding a device (an old phone or tablet) to my cell plan (Telus), but it appears to do this would raise the cost of my plan and lock me into a higher rate for 2 years.

Any thoughts, work arounds?

Thanks Jessica

Couple of thoughts. One is that any processing service will take a cut, and because of healthy competition this tends to be the same percentage across multiple services (Paypal, Square, Stripe, etc.), so I don’t think you can get around that. As far as phones go, an old phone or tablet would work and be a really cheap option, and places like Freedom Mobile offer very low cost plans (you wouldn’t need a lot of data anyway) that would suit your needs. Best of all, no contract (since you’re bringing in your own device) and you can cancel the account for the months you’re not expecting to do any sales at the market (if that’s the case). Lastly, you could always ask your employees to use their own phones, the only requirement is that you log into the payment app on their phone, but that requires a certain level of trust I suppose.