Something worth mentioning is that the upfront cost of the wireless terminals isn't what scared me away. It was the monthly charge for the wireless service + the merchant account costs. For someone that is very seasonal (like me), it was a deal breaker.
James, most Merchant's will allow you to disable the wireless service/fee's during the months your not using your terminal. I would just avoid the Merchants on eBay offering free terminals as they will want to lock you into a contract much like a cell phone company.
I just signed up through my bank. Looked around on line and found my bank to be the best deal! Do the processing on-line and it's the most reasonable rate of all.
Flagshipmerchantservices.com has pretty competitive deals - I have had great service from them, it is a 12 month contract and wireless service can be turned off from time to time if you desire to save costs.
The device looks like a cell phone with a pin pad on the back for debit cards. It's just over $50 bucks a month for service, then add on the transaction fees and percentages based on sales. A wireless printer is also used to print the two receipts (customer/shop copy that gets signed).
The fees and percentages per transaction are competitive - again, shop around for the best deal for sure, most will negotiate from what I found. When I signed up they offered a great AMEX deal so I can accept debit, visa, MC, discover and amex for those each has a specific rate schedule.
AMEX is a interesting card- most users that do use AMEX tend to spend more per transaction - I can't explain why that is but my sales support that compared to cash, or other credit card. Debit has been the least used in my sales experience but is the best option since only a ~$0.20 fee applies and no percentage is taken by the bank.
The device I have uses AT&T cellular service and that has worked well for me in the field and provides instant validation of approval and the funds show up in a couple of days.
For me the costco deal looked decent but there are ways to get better deals if you shop around IMHO.
Back before some of the major racetracks had wireless internet access, we would use the old school card terminals which made an imprint of the raised lettering, on the receipt. I'm sure you may have seen this at some point. You place the cc under a reciept and you slide the device over which makes the imprint.
At the end of the day, when we were back, all the cc transactions were entered online.
We made sure we checked ID's with every card. There is the chance that the transaction would get denied when entering it online, and in the very rare occasions that it happened, we were able to clear it up with the customer, since we had their contact info.
Just adding more info as well as the fact that you really don't need internet access to be able to accept credit cards.
DISCLAIMER: Unless things have changed in the past 4 years, and cc companies require you to do transactions online or via mobile connections, then the above should still be true.
