Lay My Hat

We are looking for the cheapest way of accepting debit and credit card payments over the phone, and would be most grateful to hear how other renters deal with this situation. Any recommendations or further information would be much appreciated. Many thanks.

Use Stripe as an online merchant service. They have an option allowing you to take payments in this way.

The only downside is that you'll need a device ready to login to your stripe account when you need it. Will someone on the phone wait for you to fire up a laptop or a PC. Using a phone to do it and using it to talk to the customer at the same time isn't easy.

Have you come across izettle? They are a Swedish company. Here in France my vet has started offering their service. I find paying her very easy - I receive an email which tells me "Hi! Open this link to make a secure payment to Dr XXX" and that takes me to a page where I can pay via my French bank card.
Obviously I don't know how much it costs her or how easy it is for her to set up. Might be worth investigating.

Stripe does the same and in addition you can bolt it into a website too to take money via a booking form / shopping cart or just a simple button. You can take payments over the phone and create bills that are sent by email.

Paypal has Virtual Terminal that lets you take card payments by phone. I don't know how the fees compare with any other service though. Details are here:
https://www.paypal.com/merchantapps/app ... alterminal