Q: QuickBooks POS, Harbortouch, Revel POS or Square. Is it worth the investment? What do you use? What should I use?
A: Here are our reviews of POS systems that you have mentioned and our advice:
1. Don't go with QuickBooks, you will be locked for credit card processing; their system is not touch screen friendly so if you plan to be busy, that's not a good thing.
2. Harbortouch is a no-no. Their fees are not low. They lock you into processing contract and take your system if you cancel.
3. Revel POS is an iPad based POS. Though software looks pretty, the iPad screen is not made for business application.
4. Square charges 2.75% per swipe. Debit card fees are 0.05% + 0.23 cents, add another 0.10 per transaction and maybe 0.25% processor fee and you will pay 0.30% + 0.33 cents. So on $100, you will pay $2.75 with square and with regular processor you will pay $0.66. And unless you are getting lots of international or business cards your average on credit cards should be about 1.6%
Our advice, go with the POS Company that specializes in industry grade point of sale equipment. Compare the features to make sure they will suit your needs, not just momentary, but future as well. (Import, export features, discounts, etc) It's better to go with the system that allows switching processors and supports major processing platforms.
Q: I work at a fine dining restaurant, and we use a POS system. How does one go about accepting bitcoins as payment?
A:Your POS systems needs to have a second currency option. POSs that we offer to our customers do have it. This way you can assign Bitcoin to be a second currency. After that you will treat it as cash payment and go to the customer with your phone or tablet to process the payment using a QR code.
Q: What payment systems do you use to process your online transactions?
A: Authorize.net is the most popular and reliable gateway and is actually owned by Visa. Cheaper gateways that charge $0 per transaction to try are USAePay, TGate or Gateway solution offered by a merchant company. What we would recommend is to find a company that will give you pass-through interchange pricing with low transaction fee. And we would recommend to use Authorize.net as it integrates with almost all shopping carts.
Please feel free to contact us with more questions
