Credit/debit card machines

[Diana]

I am thinking of getting the facilities to take credit/debit cards. Do the different french banks offer different deals on these. We are currently with CA. The plus point is instant payment but the downside is the service charge, does anyone know what the charges are.

Thanks

Diana

[Coco]

When we enquired with CA last year there was no set-up fee, monthly rental was about 12.50€ and a commission charge of 0.5% on each transaction (I think!)  However, they won't issue a machine without a valid siret number.

[Alan]

We are with the CA, and had a meeting with them last week and I then made enquiry about a machine because it would makes things easier for deposits etc. was not given any details but was told they would get somebody to give us a call as the bank said it would depend on our turnover. We don’t have a siret number so it looks like a no go then.

[mascamps.com]

You need a business account with the bank; to get that you need to be registered which in turn gets you the SIRET number.

It costs about 30€ a month from CA for our portable machine. To take deposits, you will need to have "vente a distance" (customer not present) added at an additional cost of 5€ a month or so. If you're only interested in taking deposits online (it's very easy!), it may be cheaper to use paypal which charges 3.9% with no setup fee for online transactions. For UK-only nochex is cheaper but can only handle UK issued cards.

Don't try to get the online deposit facility from the banks here as you're looking at 450€ setup fee plus monthly fees too.

If you want to take Amex, call Amex themselves as it's 3€ a month and no setup fee vs 5€ a month plus 50€ setup from CA.

 

Arnold

 

[Ian Hoare<br>All the best<br>Ian<br>La Souvigne Corrèze<br>http:www.souvigne.com]

[quote]I am thinking of getting the facilities to take credit/debit cards. Do the different french banks offer different deals on these. We are currently with CA. The plus point is instant payment but the do...[/quote]

This is something I looked into last year. By the time I'd added up the cost of the hire of the machine and the cost of debiting at a distance and the percentage charge on each transaction, I worked out that I'd have to add about a euro to my prices just to cover the cost of the operation.

What we do is this. We ask for own currency cheques for any non euro zone visitors, which we hold and return when they come, if they don't we cash them. For the french and other Euro area nationals, we again ask for a cheque, but we pay this into our account. In the case of countries which have dropped cheque books (Belgium) we ask them either (and preferably) to slip €20 into an envelope and send it, or to make a bank transfer to our account, quoting the IBAN and BIC. So far as we know, we've never lost a client by not being able to take cards. The only situation where taking cards really would be an advantage, would be for foreign clients without cheques. Maybe 10 a year for us here.

As a member of a banking family, I'm allergic to paying >1% of my turnover to a bank for something that gives me no perceptible gain in income. I have looked at Paypal, but am deeply suspicious of their security, having been heavily spammed after one or two Paypal transactions. So unless, or until I find that my turnover is reduced by not being able to take cards, I'll not even attempt to go further, irrespective of the need for a Siret.

[mascamps.com]

You're only fooling yourself that holding uncashed cheques is the same as having a deposit.

We have a friend locally who used to do that and the one time when he really needed to call in the security deposit, he couldn't because the cheque bounced. Net effect was that he was out hundreds of euro for a new cooker and now always cashes cheques in advance.

What you can do as an alternative is open a euro account with Citibank UK. With that, there is no charge for cashing cheques from any euro zone country. Although officially, I think that they do charge for other currencies, the odd dollar cheque that I've deposited hasn't attracted a charge. For their euro current account you need to keep £2000 on deposit with them (in any account) to avoid the 20€ a month charge but I'm told that you can cash the cheques via their euro savings account without any charges too and that doesn't have a minimum balance. It takes about two weeks to clear a French cheque.

 

Arnold

 

[Ian Hoare<br>All the best<br>Ian<br>La Souvigne Corrèze<br>http:www.souvigne.com]

[quote]You're only fooling yourself that holding uncashed cheques is the same as having a deposit. We have a friend locally who used to do that and the one time when he really needed to call in the security...[/quote]

Hi Arnold,

Well, I admit that I probably don't have your experience with British clients, but that said, in the 10 years that we've been running B&B, we've never ever had a bad cheque from the UK. Mind you, we don't have many cases where clients don't show up either, nor many cancellations.

Perhaps we're too lenient with cancellations, but I can't bring myself to attempt to cash a deposit if a guy rings me up in tears to say his wife has died, so he is cancelling! In fact, almost the only time we're tough about cashing deposits, is in the case of a "no show" without warning. When that happened once, we did have to deal with a stopped cheque, but that WAS finaly paid after I had a solicitor friend send a stiff letter.

The UK aside, we've never had one single bounced French cheque in around 150 such deposits a year (though these we DO cash immediately), and no problems with other foreign clients.

Keeping £2000 min in an account would cost abt £30 a year lost income (assuming that I'd otherwise keep the money at around 1.5%pa interest in an interest bearing account here in France, as I would).

So, as I ask for £20 deposit, I'd need to lose 1.5 deposits a year to pay for the account. Sorry, but the sums don't begin to add up, and the brownie points gained by charging low deposits and showing trust in not cashing cheques is incalculable in my opinion.

[mascamps.com]

I've not had problems myself nor indeed, aside from that isolated case heard of such a problem locally. The problem is that one case like that wipes out a considerable chunk of profit.

Officially, we're quite strict about cancellations but it's really only with "no shows" that we charge for as they have cost us money when we were more laid back about them. We charge even less than you for deposits: just 10€ per day per room.

I've had an almost perfect record with French cheques, the one abberation being a guy who didn't sign it and hasn't replied to our letters.

The Citibank Direct Current account pays 4.5% at the moment although that's in sterling which mightn't suit you.

For B&B deposits, it's probably not worth the hassle as you say. Our friend runs a gite and up until he hit the problem, he just kept the security deposit cheques and handed them back to people at the end. To my mind, the problems are always going to be security deposits rather than deposits to guarantee a booking. OK, it's a hassle if someone doesn't turn up and may even lose you some income if you had to turn down a booking for the same period because you were holding a deposit, but at the end of the day it's not really costing you money in the same way as a duff cheque on a security deposit may do.

Trust is OK, but it cost him dearly. Sods law of course in that the people who caused the problem for him also gave him a rubber cheque. As I say, the issue is probably mainly a gite thing with the security deposit cheques.

Arnold