Credit card processing coming to PA Farmers’ Markets

As May approaches and the weather gets warmer, Philadelphia’s farmers’ markets are getting ready to open. Through a federal stimulus grant, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture will be able to offer 145 wireless payment card readers to allow farm stands to accept federal and state food access cards, as well as credit and debit cards. Farmers Markets are a great way to get fresh local food; hopefully these new card readers make their way to some of the markets in Philly.

From time to time, Orbis has customers that wish to pay with their credit or debit card, but it’s not really a big part of our business. Still, we like being able to offer this convenience to our customers. Unfortunately, the process is way more complicated than it needs to be. The website used to process payments is confusing. We get charged three different monthly fees which seem to vary every month. We pay different rates depending on the type of card.

As a possible solution, we’ve opened an account with Square, a company started by one of the founders of Twitter. They’re sending us a free card reader that plugs into an iPhone and allows us to accept all credit cards with a flat percentage fee and no contract. Sounds good, I guess we’ll see how well it works. Anyone out there have any experience with Square?