A while back, Braintree was offering a special – process $50K worth of payments for free. You bet I signed up! And at a standard 2.9% rate, this represented a $2500 savings over the lifetime of the offer. But all good things must come to an end, and I noticed that last week, I started paying fees on Braintree transactions. Ouch!
So what’s an entrepreneur to do? My suggestion would be to get creative with your best customers, and ask them to use fee-free bank-to-bank payment options rather than a credit card. Here are a few you can check out:
- Venmo – Venmo has been around for a while and was acquired by Paypal in the Braintree acquisition of 2014. Venmo is heavily tilted towards mobile/Facebook, so it makes sense if that’s your demographic.
- Zelle – Zelle is pretty new and supported by a wide swath of big banks. I think it might take off and become a Venmo-killer.
- Google Wallet – You didn’t really think I wasn’t going to talk about Google, did you? 🙂 Google Wallet is interesting because they offer more fraud protection than many vendors do – if this is a concern for you, take a look.
These payment methods are really more designed for individuals rather than businesses, so don’t hold your breath for an integration with your favorite shopping cart, but you might want to offer these methods for settlement with your best customers, and split the fees with them. Who wouldn’t want to save 1.5%? – on $2,000, that’s $30!