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Daycare Center and Family Home Forum>Do You Take Credit Cards for Payment?
Mike 07:13 AM 06-20-2016
An earlier thread aroused my curiosity. Who offers credit card payment option? If you do, do many parents pay that way?

I've taken credit card payments for several years in my other businesses, and when I start my child care business, plan to offer that as an option for the child care as well. There is always the risk of chargebacks, but if a payment is reversed while the child is in my care, I'll just keep the kid. Same risk as checks bouncing. Care stops until payment is made by cash, including late fees and chargeback fees.
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LittleScholars 07:24 AM 06-20-2016
I allow parents to pay by debit/directly from bank account via an app, but I don't allow them to use credit cards. I simply don't want to pay a fee for credit cards, but I do love the electronic option. All of my parents use it.
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Unregistered 08:12 AM 06-20-2016
Not here. Parents pay me via automated payment. They can set me up as a vendor from their online banking or I will send them an invoice from PopMoney.

I haven't run into an issue yet, but if parents didn't have a bank account, they could pay cash. No more checks. Too hard for me to get to the bank unless it's Saturday. And I dont want to revolve my Saturdays around the bank.
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Crazy8 08:32 AM 06-20-2016
no, I don't offer credit cards as form of payment. I have the square card reader so I could take one if I absolutely had to but I don't like that I have to eat the 3% in fees so I don't offer it.

I do however LOVE Square cash as a payment method!! I found out about it here and looked into it further because I wanted something where I wouldn't have to wait a few days for the money to be available to me and it is great and my dc parents love the ease of it as well!
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Mike 11:36 AM 06-20-2016
Originally Posted by Crazy8:
no, I don't offer credit cards as form of payment. I have the square card reader so I could take one if I absolutely had to but I don't like that I have to eat the 3% in fees so I don't offer it.

I do however LOVE Square cash as a payment method!! I found out about it here and looked into it further because I wanted something where I wouldn't have to wait a few days for the money to be available to me and it is great and my dc parents love the ease of it as well!
Square is what I use for my other businesses and will use for daycare if parents want to pay that way. I never heard of square cash until just recently here. Been planning to look into that but haven't had a chance yet.
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AmyKidsCo 11:39 AM 06-20-2016
I looked into it but don't want to pay the fees so I don't. Most of my parents do direct deposit and no-one has requested it.
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spedmommy4 04:13 AM 06-21-2016
I was using Kinderlime as a sign in/out tracker and daily sheet log. It's about $1 a month per child. It also has a credit/debit billing feature. The nice thing about this feature is that there are no start up fees to accept credit or debit cards and the fees for using cards are billed to the parent. I incurred no fees for using the billing services. It was great. The other nice thing was they use stripe, so deposits were a few days quicker than with MMK.
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Meeko 06:15 AM 06-21-2016
We use Venmo. Free for me and the client. Get the money the next day. Love it!
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MarinaVanessa 09:37 AM 06-21-2016
I do. I use square and eat the cost of the fee, it's a write off anyway and I don't get too many clients using it. Most still prefer to pay with cash or check. The fee comes out to be like $4.50 for full time per week though.

I have one client that prefers to pay me through PayPal. DCD has his account connected to his bank account and he sends it through "Friends and Family" so there is no fee for me. He forgot his checkbook a couple of times and had to run out to the ATM until I offred PayPal, now it's the only way he pays. I have a PayPal business account though which comes with a PayPal business debit card so as soon as he sends the payment I get it put into my PayPal account. If I want to spend the money in there I just use the debit card. There's also no contesting the payment if paying "Friends and Family" so I don'y run the risk of having a client ask for a refund through PayPal, PayPal won't do it
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Mike 09:07 PM 06-21-2016
One of my businesses is website hosting and most of my clients (what few I have) pay by Paypal. With the pp debit card it's quick and easy. They pay, I spend.
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