Credit card payments

[jonno]

I would be interested to know if, and how, any of you accept credit card payments.
We have just started our B&B in the south of France and accept payments via Paypal for deposits and that works well (I send them an email and they pay using Paypal with their credit card. But so far we have only accepted payment when they are physically here by cash or cheque (we still have those here in France!). We would like to offer guests the possibility of paying by credit or debit card when they are here - but what is the best way? I look forward to your responses.

[Hells Bells]

Jonno, I use Paypal for everything, but I can understand that would be a problem for a B&B as you really need a card machine for guests to use on check-out. A few others on here use Paybox, but again, I don't know if you can have a card machine with that. I assume the best option would be to speak to your bank and see what they can offer you.

[CSE]

Welcome to the forum jonno.

This subject has been discussed many times.
Here are the results of the search.
search.php?mode=results

We take CC, for convince of our clients. After a stay they can pay by CC, with PP they cannot. We do not use PP.

[Hells Bells]

A Paypal payment would still be possible with access to a computer, but would be less convenient than a card machine.

[pete]

Paypal will block an account if the ip address is different.

We looked into paybox and did mean to set it up this year, we negotiated down from the original cost but the effort of moving the bank account to a business account and changing branches got too much.

We still see it as an option for the future, we would not have had a machine but could use the computer to submit the payment, and the card holder did not have to be present either, so would work for deposits,

there was an earlier thread but cant find it

[Hells Bells]

Pete, not sure what you mean by blocking payments,as I've used both French and UK accounts from several different locations both for receiving and paying out money.

[pete]

we had a guest who tried to pay us from here on paypal and they blocked his account, he had to wait til he was home and then get them to clear it, they told him, well he told us they told him that it was cos we had a pay pal on our computer and therefore it was blocked,

it was 2 or 3 years now as we never tried again with future guests, we either made them pay before or here in cash

[Hells Bells]

Probably a stray cookie or something then, but I can use both accounts on my laptop, sometimes within minutes of each other.

[pete]

yes, but, afterwards can someone else use their account ?

which is what would happen if our guests paid us by paypal, even with wifi they would be on our ip

[Hells Bells]

No, because you should be logging out of your account when you complete your transaction. Account details wouldn't be stored unless someone was permanently logged in. There isn't any software on your computer for it, so it should be no different to an online bank. My Wifi in France is communal so others staying in the residence could also be using Paypal.

[pete]

that makes more sense but I dont know if I would take the risk again.

[Titti]

You need to go to your bank and ask what commission they want for "normal" credit card payments, that is with a terminal. Our bank had very high commissions but eventually we found another bank that applies commissions which are competitive with Paypal but none of the problems.

[CSE]

What happened to jonno?

[jonno]

I am still here, and reading the responses

I tried to look at the search you recommended but there was only the search page to look at. what search terms did you use?

Jonno

[CSE]

credit card.
Sorry I thought the link I gave shown the search term too.