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I have been investigating this for a while and was rather hoping that PayPal would roll their mobile credit card machines out in France but it looks unlikely in the near future. It seem that French banks have a monopoly and don't like new 'kids' on the block.

However I have discovered one system by a company called Payleven which I am about to use. You need a tablet or mobile phone (Android of IPhone) and preferably a WiFi connection. You buy a special reader from them which uses BlueTooth to talk to the phone and then you download the program to the phone. You now have a credit/debit card terminal. If you have a printer connected to your home network you can print receipts off that if not you need to buy their printer which is quite expensive.

Pricing, well it is quite straight forward. You need to buy the reader which you own 'for life' and can be used with other systems, this cost me 63 Euros (using a promo code). There is no monthly fee and the charge per transaction is 2.75% which is not bad considering the amount we will put through it. They are UK based and registered in the UK. Being in France you have to use their French website (https://payleven.fr/). It does not matter what country you are in when it comes down to how it works etc so if you want to read about it in English try https://payleven.co.uk/ .

My reader should arrive in the next week and I will let you know how I get on if anyone is interested. The money by the way is put in your bank account weekly, it is all done in Euros and there are no transfer fees.

Lastly they don't do 'customer not present' yet but hope to be able to do this by the end of the year. Would be handy for taking deposits if they got that bit working.

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  • 1 year later...
Hi

I am a fairly new gite owner in France and am having problems using the invoice system with Paypal.  Having looked into different options Payleven appears to be a good option and my understanding is that they now take 'customer not present' payments.  Could you let me have an update as to how you are getting on with the system before I spend the money on the card reader please?

Many thanks

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Quillan no longer posts on the forum but a PM may reach him.

 

I would like to know how you resolve it as I have the same problem, all I really need is some merchant to forward my request for a deposit payment and the Customer to be able to pay it on line with their card without opening a new Paypal account.

 

Thats exactly what happens with many of my entry fees for running races, they are only about €7 and its seamless, it looks like you are dealing with a French bank but behind the scènes its someone like Monetico.

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  Maybe you'd be kind enough to enlighten me who the owners of the four fingers are, and as they are Germans do they point with their arms straight out in front of them ?[Www]

 Dog almighty another one with a sense of humour bypass.  [:P]

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If you're looking to take deposits by credit or debit card, try www.payplug.fr You can run your account in English or French and you simply email or send by text a link that allows your guests to pay their deposit with their plastic. In extremis I've even used it when a guest's stayed with no cash or cheque book. They receive the text or email straight away and within a couple of minutes I can see they've paid up.

Others on another forum have recommended Stripe too.

Jan

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  • 1 year later...

I was looking into this in detail only a few days ago, there has been a lot of consolidation in the market and many players like Payleven no longer exist, there are only a couple that operate in France and for me their limitations rule them out.

 

I have no problem with the cost of the readers, not even with the commission cost but what I must be able to do, when the occasion arises is to make a customer not present debit for a no show or last minute cancellation, they are rare but cost me a lot of money when they happen, however over 50% of bookings through Booking.com cancel within 24 hours, often within the hour, it wastes a lot of my time on admin, if I were able to charge for the first night and make the deduction as a customer not present transaction it would probably put a stop to the problem and recompense me a little bit.

 

From the research I did the only companies who allow customer not present are Payleven (no longer trading) and Paypal-here but you cannot use them in France unless someone knows a workaround.

 

The company recommended by the new poster (advertising - mods!) does not allow customer not present.

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I recently made reservations through Booking.com for hotels in France, one in Albi, the other in Toulouse.

Neither of them offered the possibility of cancelling, and the total amount was immediately taken for both of them, even though the one in Toulouse was for 3 weeks ahead.

I also made a reservation recently for a hotel in Spain, who immediately took a prepayment of 30% from my card, which was also a condition of the reservation.

Is it not possible for you to attach appropriate conditions to your reservations?

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Yes Nomoss, I can and would like to although not as much as that or it would reduce the bookings, the problem is how to actually enforce it, get the money out of people which is why I want to be able to have a credit card reader that accepts customer not present transactions.

As I dont have a Siret the banks wont let me have one and in any case it would add hundreds of euros per year to me in costs of a business account and the terminal rental charges, Paypal-here has everything that I need but of course the  French have blocked it, if anyone knows of a workaround I would love to hear from them, I have a UK address and UK bank accounts.

 

I have tried asking/insisting that customers make a pre-payment but its usually a total waste of time and takes up far more admin time for zero return and they often cancel as a result so its also counterproductive.

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My dad used to have Payleven which he told me was bought out by SumUp. Both allow "Customer Not Present" but you have to apply for it and is not covered in the advertising on their website. Speak to their customer support, it does exist. You have to have a French account, if you set one up in the UK it won't work in France (or any other country) on a permanent basis.
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I'd love to be proved wrong but Google searching brings up a FAQ for Sumup that clearly says you cannot process Customer not present, could you ask your Father for me?

 

Can I accept payments with the card not present?

We do not have a feature that allows merchants to take payments remotely (over the phone or web). This requires manual entry of card details and for security reasons we do not support this. We understand that some merchants require this for their business type, but we do not support customer not present payments. Therefore the card terminal with the card itself are necessary to process a payment with SumUp.

Last Updated: Dec 21, 2015 10:49AM UTC
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He used to have CNP with Payleven and was forced over to SumUp with the takeover. When he first tried to use CNP there was no "button" for it in SumUp. He phoned them and they gave him the "button".

Its actually called "Terminal Virtuel" on their French website and Virtual Terminal on their English website. It used to be called "Payment at a Distance" on Payleven.

I would phone them and ask if I were you. It might differ from one country to another because of local laws.
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Phone them!

 

Ha thats a laugh, like trying to find a contact number for any modern company, as a Customer do you have a phone number?

 

they have an offer at the moment so now is the time for me if they can do the CNP, I checked virtual terminal and terminal virtuel and I think thats just the generic name for that type of device, I could not find the info you describe, do you have a link?

 

Thanks for your help.

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Thanks for that, I found a London number from Google and spoke to them there, you were right, subject to an assessment by their security team (after opening an account) they may allow CNP, they dont advertise it as it brings them a much higher incidence of chargebacks, also they definitely will not allow deposit payments (they say its the law?) so I will need to think about how to operate it, I only want to do the CNP after a default, a late cancellation or no show so hopefully we will find a way.

 

Many thanks for your help.

 

Now that your father has the facility is there anything preventing him from using it for deposits? - I chose my words carefully!!!!

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We have been using Sumup for a few weeks now and it has proved very useful. However some payments can take up to a week to arrive at our bank - particularly South American guests! Chancer I would keen to hear how you get on establishing CNP. We could well use it for no shows (fortunately very rare for us).
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I have only had a couple Kong, customers currently have to give their credit card détails to make the booking but I cannot actually do anything with them, they dont know this but it put a stop to the few no shows that we had, the worst was the scammers making block bookings as soon as I released availabilty, the real problem was Booking.com not cancelling them until they became a no show even though they knew they were scammers and had made multiple bookings for multiple establishments for the same period across several countries, asking for credit card détails stopped that dead.

 

The problem I now have is 50% of the bookings, and they are always the large ones cancel thankfully straight away, once or if I can process CNP payments then I will cahnge my Policy for their to be a small cancellation charge of the first nights rental, that will stop those who currently book several places and then decide later, the genuine cancellations will only pay a small amount which should cover the 1.75% charges.

 

Time will tell, the most depressing thing for me is the need to have a smartphone or tablet.

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there is one downside with Booking.yea taking credit card details and that is we have had a few guests that thought they had payed for their stay when they booked. Once we had to 'phone Customer service and ask them to explain that they had not paid. This has not enhanced their view of us as good hosts.
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Waiting for that to happen, I manage to explain (convince) the English and French speaking guests but it will happen one day with another nationality, what does happen regularly is people dont read the confirmation E-mails, get lost, dont realise that they must pay by cheque or cash.

 

I have read lots of bad feedback for other hébergeurs dans le coin on these very points, its all about communication and despite my very limited vocabulary I beat 9/10 people around here (who just grunt, shrug their shoulders and say eeuuhh) hands down.

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I asked my dad at lunch time (some of us work you know - wink). He uses them for a deposit which is the first nights accommodation cost. He sends them a receipt for their payment and tells them that it is non refundable as per the terms and conditions on his website.

In the event of a chargeback which puts a black mark on your account if given he contests it by simply giving the link to the terms and conditions on his website which Paleven/SumUp uphold and the chargeback is refused.

On Booking.com it simply says a non refundable deposit but not how much. Apparently in law it's whoever issues the final terms and conditions that count as they are not a contract! To be honest I don't understand as it's legal stuff and I am not that interested.

He was very keen to explain that a chargeback is instigated by the client were as a refund is issued by the seller. One is a "good" thing and the other is very "bad". Also he had somebody who booked well in advance then cancelled at 100 days. He didn't have a problem in giving them a refund (special circumstances) but couldn't because you can't give a refund on a transaction over 90 days old.

As a side issue many South American countries, because of drugs and money laundering, are not allowed IBAN numbers which make bank to bank transfers almost impossible. The only option is to use Western Union but we all know the pitfalls with them.
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