Introduction to Using Your Cell Phone for Credit Card Processing

Technology is advancing at a rapid pace. Things that were unheard of just a few years ago and becoming commonplace today. Did you know that you can actually accept a credit card for payment using only your cell phone? Yes, it's true, all you have to do is set up the service and you can accept up to $25,000 or more per month in credit card payments.

Credit card processing has been available in many ways for years but the lack of technology has kept us from utilizing it as we can today. With the updating of equipment we have a much simpler and faster process today than ever before.

Easy, Secure and Fast

From a Visa, Discover and many others you can accept a credit card payment from anywhere providing you have a cell phone signal. Not only can you accept credit cards but you can also accept checks. This is a terrific idea for those who travel in their business.

They can take the payment from someone for goods or services on the spot. They do not have to wait until they get back to their office or take a check and deposit it once they get a chance. It is automatic, it is done when you finish the processing over your cell phone and your payment is usually in your account withi 24 to 48 hours.

Customers will be happy that they do not have to go out of their way to pay you and the transaction is completed in just a few minutes. Many phones from the same business can run credit card transactions. There are also swipers available that attach to your phone and you can swipe the card the same as if you were using a regular credit card machine.

How Does this Work?

If you have ever purchased anything online, you know that you enter your credit card number through a secure site. The Secured Socket Layer (SSL) ensures the information is encrypted and no one else has access to your personal information.

The same concept is used when you use a cell phone to accept a credit card payment. The information is entered and this all gets routed to a "Payment Gateway." The gateway simply sends the request to the card's provider as well as making sure the credit card is good. When it is approved the provider transfers the money to the proper account.

The company that is responsible for ensuring the transaction is valid and the one that transfers the money to the proper bank account is the merchant account provider.

Reducing Work is a Benefit

Most companies with a lot of sale reps in the field will appreciate the value of being able to process a credit card over their cell phone. This eliminates the need for carrying a credit card number or several all day long until the processing is done at the end of the day. The risk of losing a number and being responsible if it falls into the wrong hands is not something you want to think about happening either.

When you process the card immediately over your cell phone, there are less risks, you are not carrying a number around the transaction is completed at that time. The customer has their credit card and you can breathe that sigh of relief that you normally you could not until you had returned to the office at the end of the day.

This also helps cut down on the huge number of employees all coming in at once for credit card numbers to be run and creating a huge influx of work at the end of the day. This is a lot of work for whoever is processing the cards at the office.

There are several sources for finding a mobile phone credit card processing application download. Many are free and most run specials off and on throughout the year. Some say they are free but usually what happens is the application only works with their payment gateway.

This might be a problem if part of your business is taking credit card orders over the telephone as well. There are some that will work with almost any of the merchant accounts, so you may want to check around and see what is available.

Although we have had the technology to make things much simpler for some time, the lack of equipment was one of the things holding back progress. Equipment that was used for processing the credit cards was old and very awkward to carry around. Sometimes it did not work at all and losing money was one of the pitfalls when this happened.

Thank goodness there are more reliable methods in use today. The business world is on the move and not everyone is in an office every day. Some people work in the field all the time. When the need to process a credit card for services is presented in other than a typical office setting, it is very handy to be able to pull out your cell phone and take a payment right then and there. Many companies are finding this to be a crucial part of their business.

Make sure you check and see what the fees charged by your cell phone provider will be for processing credit cards. They will not actually be doing the processing but they will be connecting you with the actual processor so there will be fees. The business that plans for their employees to do a lot of transactions of this type over cell phones you will want to find a company that not only can keep up with your transactions but is not terribly expensive.