Tuesday

The Deal with Credit Cards

I am now accepting credit cards at art and craft shows. Who Hoo!

I use the merchant ProPay. I did a lot of research to find the best rates, security, and a plan that made sense to me. I looked into my bank's rates, Merchant Express, the credit card companies themselves, and ProPay was the best fit for me. I wanted to be able to take all credit cards and processes cards over the phone- for added security, and so that I could process them at craft shows if I had time. They don't have monthly minimum sales you have to meet, and they don't have a monthly fee, just a reasonable annual fee, and small fees for each transaction. I have heard nothing but good things about ProPay from the crafting community.


Another advantage is this merchant has an Etsy Affiliated Account with a reduced rate. They do not advertise it on their website, but you can read about it on this Etsy thread. It is their Premium Account for half the price. The idea behind it is that Etsy crafters only use the account at craft shows a few times a year, not on a daily basis like many businesses would.

***UPDATE 4/10/10 ProPay now offers the same lower rate to everyone with their Premium account as they used to for Etsy Affiliated accounts. No need to visit a special Etsy link now- just go to the ProPay website.***

If you have an Etsy website where you sell arts/crafts and you decided to use ProPay for face-to-face sales, be sure to either call ProPay Customer Service, or try this link to get the ProPay/Etsy reduced rate.

Don’t do what I did: I didn't know all of the things I wrote in the paragraphs above and paid full price for the premium account. Luckily I realized I could get a better rate a few days later and called customer service- they gladly switched me over and credited my account with the refund.

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