Taking payment for merchandise

[NoRhino]

We're venturing into selling t-shirts at shows soon.   How do you deal with payments?  Initially the idea was to be cash only but is there a free app that lets  us accept card payments?

 

Thanks in advance.   

[sprocketflup]

Not sure you'll find a free app, but if you do I'm all ears

I use Zettle myself, a small fee on each transaction and a card reader that bluetooths to your phone

[Bolo]

Friendly bands that switched from cash only to cards+cash reported 25 to even 50% increased sales.

[Skybone]

Did the last lot of merch as cash and PayPal.

 

A lot of people recommended Sum Up for card payments. The readers aren't too expensive.

[prowla]

Sum Up are used by catering companies at events; they also can do electronic receipts.

I'm not sure whether a proper shopping app like Wix or Shopify would be overkill.

[BigRedX]

My direct experience is that if you don't accept card payments it will significantly affect your sales. 

 

Last year I was in two bands. One has a SumUp reader and although we still do cash sales the vast majority of our merch at gigs is paid for by card. The other band, despite me continually telling them that we need a card reader, was cash sales only and over the past 12 months our merch sales have been next to nothing.

 

All the people I know using SumUp got them 3 or 4 years ago when the readers were cheap and there were various promotions where if you got a recommendation from existing user you got the reader for next to nothing and person who recommended you got a payment in return. Now that they are well established I don't know if that's still the case. Certainly back then it was the cheapest card reader and the smallest percentage on sales.

 

It's also worth being able to accept PayPal, although IME it is often too much hassle. IME not everyone who uses PayPal has it on their phone.

 

Also remember that if you are accepting cash you will need a healthy float for change as you can almost guarantee that first 5 sales will all be made with a £20 note payment.

 

Regarding payments on card sales and PayPal, everyone takes a cut per transaction, so you will need to factor it in to your pricing, but since you ought to be making 100% mark up on each T-shirt sold, in the grand scheme of things the additional cost of card and PayPal payments should be close to negligible.

[Beedster]

12 hours ago, NoRhino said:

We're venturing into selling t-shirts at shows soon.   How do you deal with payments?  Initially the idea was to be cash only but is there a free app that lets  us accept card payments?

 

Thanks in advance.   

 

As others have indicated, if you're cash only, you probably won't be venturing into selling t-shirts 👍

[BabyBlueSound]

Don't be cash only, even a lot of us middle aged folks usually don't carry ANY anymore. I absolutely can't remember the last time I had any cash on me.

[MichaelDean]

We use SumUp. It's really easy to use and has definitley resulted in sales because we can take card. They took 25p from a £15 t-shirt. Totally worth it to have made the sale rather than not made one.

[BigRedX]

BTW if you have the right phone you don't even need the SumUp card reader anymore as you can use your phone instead.

[Skybone]

9 hours ago, BigRedX said:

BTW if you have the right phone you don't even need the SumUp card reader anymore as you can use your phone instead.

NFC enabled IIRC

[TheRev]

We use iZettle. Whichever one you go for it's definitely worth it in terms of additional sales.

[Richard R]

Speaking as a punter -  I don't take my wallet and cash to gigs, only my phone and a credit card in the flip case ( my phone seems never to work on car park payment machines).

 

So cash only means I wouldn't be able to support the band.