Hey guys I'm thinking of getting mobile eftpos for my business and i might use it at fairs as well... has anyone done the rounds or have an experience with it they'd like to share? Really appreciate some feedback!
Thanks heaps
Melanie (a felt.forum newbie)

hi - yes i have bought a mobile eftpos terminal. so far i've found it to be very useful, although it is a very expensive asset (around $1400 + monthly charges) so you will have to sell heaps of stuff to make it a worthwhile expense.

I rent mine out for $50-$60 to anyone doing fairs when I'm not using it, so that helps a little bit to pay it off. I'm happy to send mine to you (or anyone else interested) if that is a more cost effective solution for you.

If you think you would be using it all the time, then it would be worth looking into buying your own terminal - the rental of one for about 6 months is similar to the cost of buying one I seem to recall.

The one i have has its own broadband connection, so it can be used anywhere with GPRS reception. It also runs off batteries so doesn't even need to be plugged in!

Hope that helps

ps, by 6 month rental, i mean to rent it from an eftpos provider.

i would suggest renting a terminal on a one off basis for a couple of fairs first

it's might seem more expensive but you may well discover that the amount of money you make by having the machine doesn't justify the expense. If you only make say an extra $100 per fair that's a minimum of about 14-16 fairs you need to make over and above your normal sales.

how many fairs do you sell at if it's every few weeks your return is fast, every few months is another thing entirely.

Also consider the fairs you sell at, are the buyers at that fair used to bringing cash (large street fairs for example) or having etfpos facilities nearby (a craft affair,Craft2.0) in both those cases I'd consider a machine redundant unless you have a lot of high ticket items.

There is not just the initial cost you have merchant and other fees to pay if you accept credit cards and not just eftpos.

do you have an iphone? there are providers like square https://squareup.com/ who allow you to take credit card payment using your iphone. Not sure what is available in nz but and iphone could possibly be a long term better business investment?

i looked into square before i bought my terminal. It is such a fabulous idea and if some clever tech person in NZ could replicate it, i'm sure they'd be very rich. It wouldn't be that hard for one of the companies that already does online payment gateways.

However, square will not yet work in NZ as it has not been approved by the bank gateway systems. If/when it is, it will be so ggod, and inexpensive! (if you already own an iphone).

The other option I have considered with my iPhone is accepting paypal payments. I haven't actually done it yet, but it could be done if you have a data plan. It would mean that at the point of sale, you get the buyer to log into their paypal account from your iPhone (or if they have one, all the better) and send you the money. They could show you the payment confirmed screen and then you could hand over the purchase.

I assume the potential security risks would be the same as logging in from a shared computer, so just make sure the login details are not saved.