First things first. Accepting credit cards in your holistic practice is a must – you can read more on that here.
That being said, there can be significant barriers to actually doing it. Assuming you can get a merchant account, setup fees can be several hundred dollars, then there’s a monthly fee to have the terminal in your office, plus the per-transaction cost.
All of this, unfortunately, tends to deter many CAM’ers from taking the credit card plunge.
Since many of you are already familiar with PayPal, PayPal’s virtual terminal might be just the thing. The premise is pretty simple: enter your client’s info online, and PayPal processes the card. The money goes in your PayPal account (accounts are free), and you tranfer that to your regular business account as desired. Not quite as slick as swiping a card, but it’ll do the trick for low volumes.
Virtual Terminal costs $20 a month, and fees are about 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction. It’s currently available only to US account holders, but should be launching in the UK soon.
All in all, it’s well worth it if you’re not accepting credit cards now!
