Accepting card and contactless payments at shows

[Chris White]

Bit of an odd one this I'll admit but over recent years it's become increasingly obvious that visitors expect to pay for admission to shows using card and contactless methods. In any enquiries I've made the response seems to be that you have to be a private individual, an incorporated organisation, or a registered charity, i.e. a legally recognised "body", to sign up to any such service.

Being just a private club I understand that we would be deemed at best a "community group". As such we can obtain a business bank account but do not qualify in the opinion of any of the card and contactless service providers.

Hence I was wondering if anyone was able to provide any advice or insight on this? At the very least I was wondering if it would be possible to draw on the experience of other clubs and groups to find out if they'd solved the question and if so how?

-- 
Chris White
Chairman Bentley MRG

[Fishoutofwater]

Went to the Alton show yesterday.

There were lots of people paying by card (entrance fee). Very slowy, of course.

[JohnR]

Paypal offer merchant services with similar rates to those offered by most other banks. All you need is a paypal account to receive the money, and of course all you need for that is an email address.

 

My wife has one for taking payments at craft shows she attends. 

[ColinK]

Stationary/office suppliers such as Ryman sell card readers for just under £30, with (according to their website) 1.69% transaction fees. 

[Jonboy]

The card machines from Ryman, WH Smith and toolstation are issued by a card processor called Sumup. The cheapest ones piggyback off a mobile phone  Via Bluetooth & app for their data and are widely used at craft fairs, foood vans etc.

Bear in mind you cannot legally charge more for card payments vs cash anymore if you accept them.

 

Edited February 5, 2023 by Jonboy

[enginelane]

Bought 2 sum ups and very successful, in fact too successful! By day 1 of the show exceeded the limit for normal trading and machines shut down. Had to provide more detailed evidence that we were bona fida Club and then no problems. Having card readers really helped on secondhand stall . On the ticket desk was 60% cash 40% card before we were shut down.

 

Moral is sort out all details before the show!

[Michael Hodgson]

The trend towards cashless transctions was accelerated by Covid.  A lot of organisations stopped accepting cash for fear of infection and many of the customers realised they found it more convenient as it saved them trips to ATMs. 

 

However some organisations are going back - most business are happy to accept cash and bot offend a customer who prefers that method.  My local Slimming World group has just reverted to cash only, though whether that's a local decision by the lady who runs it or a national policy I don't know.  It might just be a question of her not wanting to pay merchant fees.

 

3 hours ago, Chris White said:

Being just a private club I understand that we would be deemed at best a "community group". As such we can obtain a business bank account but do not qualify in the opinion of any of the card and contactless service providers.
 

Even that can be a bit bureaucratic - banks typically want a copy of your articles of assocation/rules, minutes of the AGM and a set of minutes of a committee meeting specifically agreeing to open the account.  They are also likely to say no overdraft, which is perhaps more reasonable.

[hmrspaul]

I don't know the details but the Ebor Club went to a card reader for the July show and certainly will do so again on 18 - 19 February. In July brilliant, increased the take on the 2nd hand stall so that we made a decent profit despite low attendance. And now many members pay their club fee in a few seconds using the card. 

 

Paul

[jonhall]

We had 3 sumups for our show in November, and found around half the door tickets went on a card (I don't have the absolute numbers) we found it sensible that until the queue on the door was cleared to have one desk cash and the other card, as the throughput on card was slower. I've heard from elsewhere about being caught out by transaction limits on unregistered readers, so worth checking if you will exceed them - also consider where you will charge them - one of the items discussed in our wrap-up meeting was buying an extension lead for the USB because it couldn't be left plugged in (having at least one more than you need is operationally sensible).

 

Our previous exhibition manager was very anti-cards (and no doubt still pays his bills with a cheque) and tried using the logic that we wouldn't have cash to pay exhibitors expenses, but this is backwards logic, in reality we paid exhibitors in cash as a way of reducing the amount of cash we had to bank on Monday, we still had plenty, but it would have made the books easier to reconcile if we had paid them by bank transfer. Certainly reducing the cash on hand in the box office and after made security a great deal easier.

 

Jon

[Tappa]

DEMU Showcase had card readers on the door to take entrance fees last year. Made things much easier as visitors were offering cards for payment without being asked for. As Peter Kay says, it's the future.

 

Jeff

[Gilbert]

Over the weekend I went to the NMRA meet at Stokenchurch I was selling a big stash of models, bits etc for a friend who is not very well.

As there were high value items I took the advice of my better half who has a SUMUP for the sports club we are part of. That one links to a CAF account and I bought one and linked it to my personal account. Mine was £28 from Toolstation and I got a free docking/charging station.

Brilliant - and I had a query which I logged and I got a bespoke email from their support team within about 3 hours.

It does contactless and PIN transactions via an app on my phone. I should also get commission from  SUMUP as a lot of people asked how it worked etc. Also worth noting was that its not tied to my account - we used it for the club account over the weeeknd linked to the app on my partners phone.

Chris H

[Chris White]

Many thanks for the various responses. I do not need convincing as to the merits of using a card reader, I've been advocating this for some years. The difficulty I encountered a few years ago was that when it came to signing up the bank account had to be a private individual or an incorporated body, e.g. a limited company, in that these are recognised as legal entities that can enter into contracts whereas most private clubs being just a group of individuals are not.

 

What I was looking for was information from those who have actually setup card reader accounts for such a club as to what, if any, restrictions are applied in this respect now.

[Calnefoxile]

All,

 

These are all great suggestions as to the why we should get a Card Reader and this is not the issue, as a Club we all agree that we need one for the Show, the issue is how do we get one and get it linked to the Clubs Bank Account??

 

It seems the stumbling block is the type of Club and the Bank Account we have. Some of the Card Reader suppliers won't issue us a Reader because we are classed (as Chris explains in his OP) at best as a "Community Group".

 

So the question is how did those Clubs that have them, get round this restriction without having to use an individual Club members account and trusting that person, that is not in any way casting aspersions on any of our Club members 🙂

 

Regards

 

Neal

Vice-Chairman

Bentley Model Railway Group

 

P.S. Seems Chris has just beat me to the response 😜😜😜

Edited February 6, 2023 by Calnefoxile
Adding the P.S.

[Gilbert]

14 minutes ago, Calnefoxile said:

All,

 

These are all great suggestions as to the why we should get a Card Reader and this is not the issue, as a Club we all agree that we need one for the Show, the issue is how do we get one and get it linked to the Clubs Bank Account??

 

It seems the stumbling block is the type of Club and the Bank Account we have. Some of the Card Reader suppliers won't issue us a Reader because we are classed (as Chris explains in his OP) at best as a "Community Group".

 

So the question is how did those Clubs that have them, get round this restriction without having to use an individual Club members account and trusting that person, that is not in any way casting aspersions on any of our Club members 🙂

 

Regards

 

Neal

Vice-Chairman

Bentley Model Railway Group

 

P.S. Seems Chris has just beat me to the response 😜😜😜

The SumUp my partner uses is linked to a sports club CAF account with no issues. It may be worth contacting SUMUp and asking the question - the cost is the outlay for the machine and about 1.7% on transactions. The sum up account also provides a complete record of every transaction on the phone app if required and also issues e-receipts to a phone if requested

[KeithMacdonald]

@Calnefoxile - hope you get your Sumup setup soon.

 

One thing to note -

In the Sumup setup, after having linked your bank account, you might find Sumup has options for what to do with payments received.

 

It might have changed, but when we did it, there was more than one option. IIRC it was something like:

[X]  keep it in the Sumup account

[  ] forward that payment (after fees) to your bank account

 

The option to forward that payment (after fees) to our bank account was not the default. We had to tick an option box for that. Otherwise the payments received just accumulate in the Sumup account.

[enginelane]

2 hours ago, Calnefoxile said:

All,

 

These are all great suggestions as to the why we should get a Card Reader and this is not the issue, as a Club we all agree that we need one for the Show, the issue is how do we get one and get it linked to the Clubs Bank Account??

 

It seems the stumbling block is the type of Club and the Bank Account we have. Some of the Card Reader suppliers won't issue us a Reader because we are classed (as Chris explains in his OP) at best as a "Community Group".

 

So the question is how did those Clubs that have them, get round this restriction without having to use an individual Club members account and trusting that person, that is not in any way casting aspersions on any of our Club members 🙂

 

Regards

 

Neal

Vice-Chairman

Bentley Model Railway Group

 

P.S. Seems Chris has just beat me to the response 😜😜😜

Surely you have a club bank account? Once we had proved evidence of a structure of the club, minutes of meetings etc then we nominated a person, in our case Deputy Exhibition Manager is registered with sum up. Our issue at the moment is the service we are receiving from Virgin Money. We are seriously thinking of  moving the account but given York Expo experiences are going to give ourselves  year to sort out. 

[Chris M]

I would have thought that a club with a proper constitution, a set of rules and minutes of committee meetings should be able to get both a bank account and SumUp card reader.  

[Michael Hodgson]

I've been to one or two shows where traders are willing in principle to accept cards.  However in practice it can take ages to process the transaction - I don't kow whether that's poor reception in steel-framed buildings or simply the network being swamped with too much traffic in a confined space.