Most banks have a 'Merchant Services' division which you can approach to take credit cards. However, as with most things, they don't get too enthusiastic about setting up new business if they don't think you're going to take that much money. When they do, they tend to charge a higher fee.
With ours, HSBC Merchant Services, we pay a flat commission rate of between 1% and 2% of the whole transaction (including the vat element) depending on which card it is and whether its a personal card or business card.
American Express is the most expensive one to take (i think the commission is over 2% on that) However, there is a flat rate of 35p for Switch and Solo transactions instead of a percentage.
You would obviously pay more as a contractor taking fewer payments but then you guys work on much higher margins than we do (
) and could probably justify it.
There can be a lot of paperwork involved and there may well be alternatives to dealing with Merchant services directly. Sometimes organisations like the FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) negotiate flat rates for their members but I dont think there are any cleaning related schemes around (maybe this is something the NCCA have looked at / could look at!?)
When we first started with HSBC we told them that we were members of the National Association of Master Shoe Repairers
and we were put on a better starting rate until the volume of transactions started to increase!
Regards
Mike
