Card payments over the phone

[andreasfault]

I'm not a huge fan of doing this tbh, as it seems such an easy way for your details to be stolen, but I'm taking over a small business and I'm wondering if it's something we should offer? A deposit needs to be taken at time of booking, the rest is payable in person (leisure thing). Currently only cheques/postal order accepted for deposit, and cheque/cash on the day.

Company turnover will be about £12000, about 200-250 customers, profit about £4000 after the first couple of years (stuff needs updating). Global Payments through hsbc is £250 for the terminal and transaction fees are a little over 1%.

Realistically turnover could increase a tiny bit, but expansion isn't possible, so should we just add a bank payment option, or should we 'lose' £350 profit taking card payments?

Have you factored in the extra costs and time for PCI DSS compliance?

What are the extra costs?

Training? Documentation? Cost of time spent? Charges from your bank? Audit costs? It depends on your business circumstances and bank.

Security/firewalls etc too.

merchantmachine.co.uk/pci-dss/

As far as I know, all that needs to be done is an annual questionnaire which needs no training to complete.

I will ask the bank about extra charges, but it certainly wasn't mentioned last week when we opened another business account. Every other bloody thing was though, took almost 2 hours to do a simple start-up account, and we already have 9 other business/personal accounts and a couple of loans and isa's with them...… surely they know more about me than I do!

No website transactions make every a lot more simple and straightforward.