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One of the first daunting hurdles in the logistics of opening up a market stall pop up is whether or not you should accept EFTPOS payments or simply be a cash-only stall. Our thought on this is EFTPOS should be an option for your customers, especially since the world is moving towards becoming more and more of a cashless society. Not allowing your customers to pay by card could cost you significant sales, as the momentum your customers had to purchase decreases with every minute they leave your stall in search for an ATM.
Accepting card payments can seem daunting. Traditionally, this would involve hiring an EFTPOS terminal from your bank, which may not be feasible for a weekend market stall pop up as you would be looking at an establishment fee of around $90, an annual fee of about $30-$40, a monthly fee to rent out the terminal, and a monthly merchant fee usually around $20 as well as transaction fees. Whoa, no wonder accepting EFTPOS payments can seem daunting! But it’s really not. In no time at all your market stall pop up can be accepting both cash and card payments.
Fortunately, if you have a tablet or a smart phone, you can accept credit payments for a relatively low cost by purchasing a piece of hardware that attaches to your phone, or directly from your phone, and installing an app onto your phone. The hardware is a once-off cost, typically under $100, and there are no monthly fees to pay. You do, however, still need to pay transaction fees as you would with a traditional EFTPOS terminal.
Two of the main contenders are the PayPal reader and the Square reader. Both are great solutions for your market stall pop up. The prices and fees below were accurate when this was written, so check each provider’s current rates before you buy.
Using a PayPal Reader at a pop up market stall
The PayPal reader is a solid choice when it comes to accepting mobile payments at markets and can be paired with both Android and Apple devices. Unlike the Square reader, PayPal reader allows for pin numbers to be used on the reader itself.
The PayPal point of sale app allows for inventory management, which can make the checkout phase smooth during a customer transaction, but you can also just enter the product amount if you prefer to track sales on paper.
One great benefit of PayPal is its name and credibility. The actual reader looks more like a traditional card terminal than the Square reader, and PayPal itself is a highly recognised brand.
Cost of reader:
PayPal reader: $49
Fees:
1.95% per transaction (if you manually enter the card the fee is 2.9% + .30c)
Using Square at Your Market Stall Pop Up
We use Square as it is extremely simple to use with just a tablet or smart phone and the reader. The entry level chip reader is a mere $19 or a tap reader is $59. The app itself features a pretty advanced point-of-sale system that can track your inventory. Square also has a pretty solid reporting feature that can track product trends, average sales per order, daily and weekly trends, and an array of other useful information.
If you want to cut costs even further, Square now lets you accept payments via the phone by tapping rather than using a card reader. In my opinion, I would use the Square reader primarily and the phone as a backup as I have found the phone tapping a bit awkward to use as you have to get the card angle just right.
What we love about Square is that it can be used in the most basic fashion, or you can scale it to play nicely with other applications such as accounting software like Xero or Quickbooks. What made Square a winner for us was that it syncs and plays nice with our WooCommerce online store, which is an extreme time saver in inventory management.
So let’s say we have only one specific item left in stock, and it sells at our Saturday morning market. Square will automatically remove this item from the inventory, meaning that no online shoppers will be able to buy an item that we no longer stock.
Cost of reader:
Square contactless and chip reader: $59
Standalone Square chip reader: $19
Fees:
1.9% per transaction (if you manually enter the card the fee is 2.2%)
Hot tip: Get free processing with SquareUp
If you are new to Square, signing up via our link may include free processing on your first sales. The offer changes, so check the current terms when you sign up.
Should I require a minimum spend to pay by card?
This is a personal choice. Personally, I don’t have a minimum amount. I sell some items for kids to buy, and some items are as little as $2. I don’t want to tell a kid, No, sorry, you can’t spend your $2 on this item because you don’t have a card. Maybe I’m not the most business-savvy, but my general reasoning is that everything works out in the end.
The amount of lost fees I have on those smaller items is very minimal, and there is still profit, and honestly, on a $2 item, I was never going to make a lot of profit anyway. Those items are really just to bring people into the store, and often, when the kids buy those products with their own money, the parents buy a more expensive item.
If you do decide to have a minimum amount with card payments, I wouldn’t make it anything crazy like $10. Five dollars is reasonable, and most customers would understand.
Should I add a fee for using payments by card?
Some market stall pop up businesses do charge a fee for using cards; it’s usually the same fee that they pay. There’s two ways of looking at this. On the one hand, these market store pop up businesses have ensured that their cash paying customers will pay less than if they were paying by card.
They haven’t had the product’s pricing absorb the fees and while this is actually a good thing, a customer does not see it that way. The customer does not think about the fees the market stall pop up business is absorbing, all they see is that they are made to pay more than what is on the signage.
If you’re operating a market stall in countries that do apply taxes at the checkout and not on the shelf price, you would be able to get away with having a surcharge as the customers are used to the final cost not appearing until the checkout. However, in Australia, the final price tag is what we pay at the checkout, so knowing that there is an extra percentage or surcharge to pay does not go down well with customers.
Should you still carry cash to a market stall pop up?
Absolutely. Cash is still a vital part of our society and one that should not be phased out. Read our How much of a cash float should I bring to a market stall pop up? to give you an idea of how much of a cash float to carry with you.
By offering both cards and cash at your market stall pop up, you are able to accommodate all customers, and it ensures you never miss a potential sale.
Related reading: how much of a cash float to carry and the market directory.
