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I called tap to pay a fad in 2019 and now I feel like a fool at every job site
Six years ago I was dead set against letting customers tap their card instead of swiping. I run a small moving company out of Tucson and my whole argument was that the machines cost money, the fees were higher, and half my guys out on jobs would forget to bring the reader anyway. So I stuck with the old swipe terminal and ate the chargeback arguments that came with it. Then in early 2023 my bank guy showed me my numbers: 3.1 percent of my invoices were coming back as failed payments, and most of those were people whose cards just got declined at the swipe. He talked me into trying a $49 tap reader for one van, just one. Within two weeks that van had zero declined payments and my drivers said tips went up because people could just boop their phone and go. Now every crew carries one and I feel silly for holding out that long. But here is what I keep going back and forth on: did tap to pay actually fix anything, or did it just move the fee around so I pay more per swipe than I would have? Would love to hear from other small business owners on whether the tap fees are eating your margin too.
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emma7685h ago
My brother runs a food truck in Boise and he did the same thing, held onto his swipe reader until a customer cussed him out over a declined card in the middle of a lunch rush. He switched to tap only and his failed payments dropped from around 2.8 percent down to basically nothing. Here is the thing though, his per swipe fee did go up a little, but he stopped losing whole sales to declines, and a lost sale costs way more than a few extra cents. So I guess it depends on your ticket size, if you are selling $8 burritos the fee stings more than if you are invoicing a $900 move. For you the tap reader probably pays for itself just by not eating those 3.1 percent failures anymore.
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