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I do consulting work for a friend who has a surprisingly common problem: He needs to do card processing but only certain times out of the year. He goes to con
by rit 16y ago
I do consulting work for a friend who has a surprisingly common problem:
He needs to do card processing but only certain times out of the year. He goes to conventions and sells merchandise, etc and wants to be able to take credit cards but the monthly & inactivity fees would wipe him out.
So far all I've seen that could fix this potentially is Square, but they have yet to ship out their swiping widgets to use to try it out.
If someone can find a way to make it affordable to process cards "When you need it" it might be huge.
- trafficlight 16y agoHave they shipped any of the swiping widgets yet? I signed up about a month ago and still haven't heard anything.
- spicyj 16y agoYep, I got mine about a month ago.
- thetrumanshow 16y agoStill waiting for mine. I setup my account on the day the app appeared in the app store.
- crystalis 16y agoIs it possible to be a "UHaul" of card processing? What are the limits for one company processing cards for another?
- bkrausz 16y agoPretty strict, normally all merchant account agreements mention that you can't process cards for anyone else or any other business/purpose/website other than the one listed. They like to keep a tight eye on that.
- rit 16y agoYou can of course deal directly with credit card companies like Visa and Mastercard - they have well documented APIs for interfacing with them directly. Back in the late 90s, RedHat bought a small company in Pittsburgh which made a rather awesome product called CCVS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCVS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCVS) which allowed you to talk directly to the credit card companies, circumventing the merchant accounts. My employer started using CCVS to provide direct credit card services at the time, and I wrote a PHP module which shipped for a few years as part of PHP core for using it. Sadly, RedHat discontinued the product ; I'm not sure if anyone else has stepped up to do something similar but it was incredibly easy to use, powerful and got around the absurd restrictions most merchant accounts provide. I'm assuming Square is talking directly to the CC clearing houses, which is how they keep their costs reasonable.
- cmelbye 16y agoSquare sounds perfect for that. They are shipping out card swipers already, too. I would request another one if you haven't gotten yours yet.
- rit 16y agoTheir site says for status: "Your reader will ship soon"