If you don’t accept credit card payments for your yoga teaching services, you’re undoubtedly losing sales.
The fact is many people don’t carry cash and instead buy the bulk of their purchases with credit cards.
Setting up credit card processing in a permanent yoga studio isn’t terribly difficult. There are many options for setting up traditional credit card processing.
However, do you ever teach yoga or offer other services away from your main studio? Perhaps you teach at company offices, in private residences, or anywhere outside your permanent studio?
Or, maybe you don’t have a permanent studio and instead teach in rented space such as a recreation centers.
Don’t lose sales because you can’t accept payment then and there
You don’t have to forego the option for your off-site yoga students to pay by credit card if you have a cell phone. There’s technology that makes it dead-simple to accept credit card payments with your cell phone using mobile credit card processing … and it’s inexpensive to set up.
What is mobile credit card processing?
- Mobile credit card processing enables you to accept credit card payments on your mobile device.
- All you need is the software, a card swiper attachment and a merchant account.
- My preferred cell phone credit card processing service pricing structure is one that doesn’t have a fixed monthly cost and instead charges on a per transaction basis.
The Cost
If you decide to look for setting up mobile credit card processing, then I strongly recommend looking for a service that:
- has no start up cost (no cost to buy the equipment and no cost to get the software installed and running)
- offers a per transaction fee only (instead of a monthly fixed cost)
- the top percentage per transaction fee is less than 3 percent.
About mobile credit card processing per transaction fees
Credit card merchants commonly charge fees based on a percentage of the transaction value. The same fee structure is offered by some mobile credit card processing services.
I recommend starting with a cell phone credit card processing service that costs you only when you accept fees. Yes, you’ll pay a percentage of the transaction; however, you can offset that cost by slightly increasing your yoga teaching fees.
This way you’re not committed to yet another monthly fixed expense. As a business person myself, I do all I can to minimized fixed overhead and instead opt for expenses tied to revenue. In other words, I prefer paying expenses when those expenses are directly tied to revenue.
How can you as a yoga studio owner or yoga teacher take advantage of mobile credit card processing?
There are many situations where mobile credit card processing will benefit your yoga business. The following are a few examples:
- You have a studio without existing credit card processing capabilities. You can simply set up mobile credit card processing so that you can use it in your studio and outside the studio.
- You teach classes at other locations such as local recreation centers, gyms, community centers, company offices, private residences, etc. Instead of sending out an invoice and waiting for payment, you can use mobile credit card processing to accept payment at the time your services are provided. Cash flow is critically important and it’s always better to get paid today rather than tomorrow.
- On retreats you can accept payment.
- At workshops you can accept payment.
Essentially, with mobile credit card processing you have your credit card processing capability with you every where you teach and attend.
What should you look for in cell phone credit card processing?
In addition to no fixed monthly cost and no start-up costs, I suggest you look for the following features:
- Operates on the main mobile devices such as iPhone, Blackberry, iPad, and Android mobile devices.
- Integrates with your accounting / bookkeeping software for immediate sales and transaction tracking.
- Accepts major credit cards such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express.
- The service provides excellent customer service.
- The service is offered by a highly reputable company.
- No contract. You want the option to quit the service any time.
Which mobile credit card processing service offers all of the above?
GoPayment by Intuit does. GoPayment offers all of the features set out above, the most important the option to pay fees on a per transaction basis. This way you only pay fees when you collect money.
GoPayment is a mobile credit card processing service by Intuit, who is the developer of the popular QuickBooks small business accounting software. They’re a reputable company that has been around for many years.
Click here to get cell phone credit card processing started for free with GoPayment.
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