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How to Accept Cards with Your Cell Phone

Make sure you can accept credit and debit cards at craft fairs, pop-up shops, and farmer's markets.

Shoppers prefer using plastic.

Payment company TSYS did a study in 2016 about U.S.consumer payment preferences. They found that shoppers prefer to use debit or credit cards for 75% of all transactions.

If you sell goods at a farmer’s market, pop-up shop, or craft fair, you’re likely aware that fewer people carry cash. Accepting credit or debit cards is an easy, affordable solution to our increasingly cashless society. It can increase the amount of people who can purchase your goods or services.

How to Accept Cards with Your Phone

To be able to accept cards wherever you set up shop, you’ll need three things:

  1. A smartphone
  2. A card processing company
  3. A payment processing device (a card reader)

The card processing company will provide you with a card reader after you set up an account.

Here at NWCU, we partner with Retail Profit Systems (RPS) to provide our members with a payment processing device for all forms of electronic payment transactions. We’d proud to partner with RPS because it offers a lot of value to our members:

  • RPS offers 24-hour personal support over the phone
  • RPS is local: they’re located in Central Point, Oregon
  • RPS has a transparent pricing model

If you’d like more information about how RPS can help you, read more here. Or submit an inquiry form and they’ll reach out to you quickly.

Other popular card processing companies you may have heard of are Square, Stripe, Clover Go, and Spark Pay—these also offer card readers.

How Card Readers Work

Once your card reader is set up, it’s easy to take payments!

Here’s an example of what a transaction using a card reader looks like:

  1. A customer presents a payment with their card
  2. The card is inserted into your terminal (smartphone/tablet)
  3. The transaction information is electronically sent off with the payment gateway, which communicated with the customer’s bank and the card networks, such as Visa or MasterCard
  4. Your processor transmits the processing data to the customer’s bank, so the charge can be approved
  5. The approval is then sent back through to your payment processor
  6. You’ll receive the money in your account soon!

Card processing companies may each process payments differently, so make sure to ask the ones you’re looking at how quickly the money will be in your account.

Contact us to Learn More

We know that being able to accept cards is an important part of business. No matter how big or small, your profit is important to us and we will work together to find ways to improve its growth.

Please feel free to contact us for more information by calling us at (800) 452-9515, visiting our branches, or submitting an inquiry form to Retail Profit Systems (RPS) to discuss your interest in their products and move forward in getting your own card processing system established.