ProPay MicroCard Reader for Home Businesses “On the Go”
If you sell products “on the road,” here is a new device to help you capture sales more efficiently. It’s called a “micro card reader” (see photo). Here is how it works:
You sell stuff at a trade show, flea market, antique show, county fair, etc. You take credit cards and swipe them through the reader. If you have a laptop and an Internet connection, you can verify that you have a good card right away, or you can store the card number until you get back home, then download to your laptop. The reader stores up to 71 transactions, but you must enter the other transaction data directly (like name and address, item and cost).
The credit card data is encrypted so if the reader gets stolen no one can get to the numbers, and the card can only be used with your account.
You have to have a ProPay merchant account to use the card, but they make it easy to set up, and their prices are reasonable. You pay an annual fee based on the number of transactions and the types of credit cards you want to accept. There are no monthly fees, no minimums; you pay the annual fee and a per-transaction fee. The cost of the card reader is $5 a month, in addition to the cost for the merchant account.
The only thing I didn’t like about the card reader was that it doesn’t work with a Mac; it only runs on Microsoft XP. I really want to get this card reader, so I can sell at seminars and speaking engagements, but I have resisted putting XP on my Mac. Guess I will have to break down and do that.
What do you think? How would you use this card reader? One of these days real soon we’ll be waving our BlackBerry devices around and picking up all the data we need to process a credit card transaction. Until then, this device is pretty cool.
Photo courtesy: ProPay
Tags: baby boomers home business, credit card processing, mico card readerShare This
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POSTED IN: Products, Technology, Value Adding
2 opinions for ProPay MicroCard Reader for Home Businesses “On the Go”
AJ
Feb 11, 2009 at 6:47 pm
The ProPay device is GREAT. This makes it so much easier to sell products and services. And just as important: the data is completely encrypted so that you won’t be exposed to the kind of fraud and hacking that keeps happening to retailers and others who accept credit cards.
Jean Murray
Feb 11, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Thanks for the opinion.
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