Debit Machines

There is some controversy over whether or not to share your debit machine with a gift card program.  The answer is it depends.

Most debit machines can handle a gift card application and most merchant account providers over some sort of gift and loyalty card service in tandem with their credit card processing services.

The reason some business owners feel it is not a wise move to have gift cards on your debit machine is because rates change with credit card processing and having gift cards on that machine is a real quick way to be married for life with that processing company.  You can't cancel your services on debit machine if you have 100's if not 1000's of gift cards out there.  Those gift cards will only work with that service provider.

Gift cards can be very powerful and should not be avoided from using just because of this challenge.  You just should use a separate debit machines for each service, that way you are ever being held hostage by one service provider.

Recently IAN HARVEY wrote an very interesting article on smart card/ chip card technology for Canadians.  It is a worth while read if you want to know who the new technology will affect your business.  Click here to read it.

Merchant's ask me all time if they should surcharge and my usual answer is..."It depends."  For the most part I think is not widely accepted by the general public and you may risk turning a customer off by surcharging.  I understand that the only reason a merchant wants to surcharge is to be able to off set their own payment processing expenses, but I still think is is better to raise your prices on the front end then it is to try to compensate as your customers go through the check-out.  The customer doesn't understand that you are just trying to minimize your expenses so you can continue to stay in business, they see it as though you are charging them to pay and sometimes this can be a large enough turn-off that they may never return. In my opinion it is not worth the risk of losing returning customers. The only time I condoned this is when the merchant is in an extremely competitive market and they can not raise their front end prices on products and services without losing business to the competition so they must do it on the backend/check-out.