We are now ready to start accepting two new ways of letting people pay for various things we sell – credit cards and PayPal. Up to now it has always been cash or check but we have had a lot of requests from students taking classes to handle credit cards. Some don’t even have a checking account! Ah the millennials …
For credit cards we have set up a Square account and purchased a chip card reader which works with most phones once the Square app is installed. I’ve been testing it for the past few weeks and all looks good. The money goes right into our checking account (minus their 2.75% fee which is pretty typical). I’ve set up categories for classes, ships store, events like Holiday Dinner, PCYC, etc. so the transaction get clearly identified. Our first big test will be the evening the Engine Maintenance class kicks off. I’ll be there to let students pay by credit card. We will also train some of the other squadron members on the Square reader.
The other payment method we now can accept is PayPal. For the moment, this works through my personal PayPal account. First the buyer must have their own PayPal account. Then the buyer transfers money from their PayPal account to my account. I then transfer it directly to our Squadron checking account. There is no fee for this transaction so that’s a plus for us. Eventually I want to see if we can set up a PayPal account for the Squadron so the money does not have to go through my account. In the meantime however, we can get started.
I’d be interested if you have any comments or suggestions about this. Drop me a note at shyork@yahoo.com. Thanks