It was hard to get data on the options for taking card payments because the banks do not seem to publish their rates online in ways that are easy to understand or compare. And there is a clunky process of needing to contract for the terminal, the network and the payments processing with two separate firms, and these things do not seem to be well-coordinated.
These are the rates that we pay to ANZ on different forms of payment (not counting the network fee or the EFTPOS terminal rental, and note also that these fees are calculated on the retail price, i.e., the price including GST).
| Type | Rate |
|---|---|
| Visa or Mastercard credit | 3.85% |
| Visa or Mastercard debit | 1.22% |
| Paywave | 4.30% |
| Card not present | 3.90% |
There is a minimum monthly charge of $20.
We could get cheaper rates by being a member of the Retailers Association or Booksellers NZ but we would have to switch to bank with Westpac (we bank with ANZ)
Paywave
I turned off PayWave in early January because it cost too much. I wondered if doing this might increase EFTPOS, since if the customer had to insert or swipe their card anyway, a major convenience of using a credit card would be lost. The data supports this hypothesis because we have seen a shift to EFTPOS and away from credit cards since the change, but we would need more time to be surer because we have seen these shifts in previous months before.
The grey line on the chart is the average EFTPOS revenue per day since 1 August as a proportion of total card revenue. The orange line is the 14 day average. You can see that since I switched off PayWave we have had a higher proportion than average in EFTPOS revenue (which means less money from Credit Cards). It is too soon to be sure that this move to EFTPOS we can see is a sustained thing. I will keep an eye out and update you.
I am thinking about getting a store mobile phone and switching to mobile EFTPOS because it is cheaper at 3 per cent for credit cards (although debit cards go up) and more flexible. My preferred solution would be to do payments online with Stripe or similar and cut out the bank and the EFTPOS payments entirely. But I can't (yet?) take EFTPOS payments other than with an EFTPOS machine.