tblake05 Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 USATech and Parlevel, 295.00 cost of equipment.... fine. 5.95% swipe fee..... I get it 7.95 monthly service fee per machine.... Really? We can all see who's really getting rich here. Anyone use (if there are any) card readers that don't have a monthly service fee? I can see maybe a 7.95 monthly fee per account, but per machine? Are they NUTS? So say I want to try this on 5 machines. Thats 7.95 times 5, 40.00 a month gone. Yes I love working for free. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TKK Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 Yeah those fees suck. They should atleast throw in vending software or something. However g10 readers are 229. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tblake05 Posted October 25, 2018 Author Share Posted October 25, 2018 Hmmm, just got a quote a couple days ago at 289 each. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngryChris Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 The $7.95 is for the wireless fee. That's the service to send and receive data. The 5.95% is for processing fees. I'm not defending them but it seems like you aren't aware of what you are paying for. Of course that's how they make their money, though. It's the nature of their business. However, I think you have lost sight on the purpose of card readers. They are primarily added to machines in order to ADD sales. If you can add an extra $100/month in card sales from one machine, the extra sales would more than cover all of the fees and the cost of the reader. Yes, 5 readers totals up to $40/month in wireless fees just as 500 readers totals up to $4,000/month in wireless fees... but we are talking about $7.95 per unit. You only want to add readers to accounts that will generate extra sales. Don't add readers to accounts with a bunch of 45+/year olds who only use cash (unless you just want telemetry) and don't add them to accounts that are already slow due to low employee counts. You have to do your due diligence to figure out what is worth a card reader but once you start getting that weekly deposit into your checking account, you'll stop worrying too much about the fees. I get roughly $125/week deposited into my account every week. It's not huge but i only have about 7 swipes out there (a few are telemetry only for a few more weeks), soon to be about 20. With that, i estimate as much as $350/week in deposits. Not all of that is extra income but i would guess that over half of it is extra and the other half is just from former cash-users switching to cards. But think.. if 7 accounts yield $500/month, or about $70/month each after ALL fees, then i'm making about $20/machine each month or $240/year. After 15 months, the readers are paid for. And these aren't big accounts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tblake05 Posted October 25, 2018 Author Share Posted October 25, 2018 3 minutes ago, AngryChris said: The $7.95 is for the wireless fee. That's the service to send and receive data. The 5.95% is for processing fees. Yeah I get it. Just sort of annoying hearing all the little fees. Probably wouldn't bother me as bad if they grouped it all into one and said say 7% processing fee. Rather than processing fee and wireless fee, equipment fee, shipping fee. Wish I could invent my own card reader and use my verizon wireless service to transmit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tblake05 Posted October 25, 2018 Author Share Posted October 25, 2018 Kind of weird how they're all so secretive too. Like its hard to find their fees listed online and you always have to contact them for more info. Then they get your email and cell phone number and here comes the telemarketers and spam email. One company I contacted didn't even give me the rates up front after about 4 emails back and forth. It took me informing them that I was about to choose a different company if they didn't have competitive rates. Then I got a response back with the info I needed. Sure sign me up.... I don't even care how much you charge. I'm just gonna bend over. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngryChris Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 USAT sends me promotional email but i rarely get phone calls. Maybe every 3 months or so. I think you are comparing the life of a business owner to that of most other people. Yeah, you'll get people calling you because they want your business, just as you call accounts trying to get their business. I don't think the majority of companies you deal with (for vending) are selling your information to telemarketers. As for the fees. A flat percentage wouldn't make sense. The wireless fees are a fixed cost. The equipment fees (which don't apply if you buy the unit outright) are fixed. And the processing fees are based off of sales. The SAME stuff goes on with utility companies and many phone carriers. The bill is littered with all kinds of fees. I hate fees too but it is what it is. It's really not that much if you have good accounts. Think about it... $8/month. If your account can't handle $8/month, you need to ditch it. As for your idea using your verizon phone, that's funny because that idea has kind of already been invented. It's called payrange and users use an app to pay from their mobile pay service and their phones transmit the data for you. Yes, it's cheaper but that's because it doesn't use cards. You can't accept cards without telemetry (wireless modem) because the reader wouldn't be able to process the card without being able to connect wirelessly right then and there. Having a reader with no internet means the reader won't work. That's why card readers go down at ANY store when their internet is down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NYCandyMaN Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 anyone deal with payrange? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TKK Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 Some places NEED cc readers. I have places that do just $800 and up in credit card payments per month. I put them on all my machines, i like the telementery stuff, and i see it as a whole. I usually get about 9k a month just in credit sales and thats with maybe 100 readers or so. Plus the .10c upcharge helps, from those 9k i get an extra $900 a month to help with the cc fees. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vetvend Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 USAT has the lowest rates out there and the best back office...competitors have a hard time matching their rates...I typically have to show them my debit to credit card ratio to improve the deal.....I have others that charge variable rates depending on the type of card used and I never know from month to month what my charges will average out to.....I just wish USAT would improve their customer service Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brendio Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 My best account did around 65% in card sales. I noticed it when the reader was out of action. And on this side of the pacific, our fees are even higher. AU$16 per month service and data fee per machine, the bank take a cut, the processor takes a cut too. Works out to around 20-25 cents per transaction. But in the right accounts, it is definitely worth it. Plus the telemetry data allows your business to be more efficient and can warn you of problems before the site notifies you, so it should all pay for itself, unless the account is slow slow it's not worth having. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BTVFC Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 10 hours ago, NYCandyMan said: anyone deal with payrange? PayRange fees are lower, but no swipe ability, so you may lose some sales. Another disadvantage is not every machine will report cash sales, or specific item sales data. It all depends on the age of the machine's controller. It's a hit or miss with MDB converters, too. I do ok with it. About 50% of my sales are PayRange. Most of the users are millennials, and those who embrace technology. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Southeast Treats Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 The cost for adding cards in vending is crazy higher than normal retail. I would like to see the swipe fees come down to around 3% but that won't happen anytime soon, especially with all the reward cards out there that have to generate the customer rebates. Hardware costs may get cheaper over time as tech usually does. The monthly fees cover the cell data service and the back end processing and support from the provider, much cheaper than providing your own servers and hiring IT guys to keep it running on your own. Cashless is growing everywhere; ask anyone under 40 if they routinely carry cash anymore, 90% will say no. That number is growing, and in a few years cashless will be as much a necessity in a vendor as validators are today. Payrange is a good concept but I have been disappointed in the reality of it in my operation. Here is the good news - cashless can actually be cheaper that cash for us. Cash has to be collected, transported, counted, and transported again to the bank. It can be lost or stolen anywhere before the bank. The costs of handling cash are so normal to us we don't think about it, but it can be anywhere from 4% to over 10%. Cashless is secure and saves time. Plus we get the data to be more efficient and provide better service. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vetvend Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 Your swipe percentage is so high because your products are low dollar amounts.....my average swipe is more than $10 so my percentage is way lower....I have rental kiosks where the swipe is between $50 and $100 and the % goes down a bit more...as long as the frequency meets the threshold Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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