Izettle - perfect for car booters and small market traders?

[WorthDoingRight]

@Laura No, there is no referral system that I am aware of. I just thought it would be ideal for many of us that on occasions may need to take a credit or debit card.

It takes about 7 days to arrive once ordered. You can also have multiple accounts with the same reader so I have a personal one and a business one.

It must be a good system as the EE stores (Orange/T Mobile) are selling it also and I doubt they are easily convinced to stock anything that might upset their customers.

[frazzle]

Sound a very good idea for someone that is mobile, but i thought we went on to pin code because of the signature being less secure.

[Ian M]

Sound a very good idea for someone that is mobile, but i thought we went on to pin code because of the signature being less secure.

Speaking as someone who worked in a bank & was around when they went from signature to pin for card transactions. I'm very surprised the banks have said ok to this system because of the amount of fraud that went on before using pin numbers. The big problem we found was that merchants were not checking the signatures well enough against the signature on the cards. We even experimented with an OCD system to match & verify signatures but, the problem with this was it was picking up slight differences in signatures & rejecting the transactions. The only real way around it was to bring in the chip & pin system which has cut fraud by a large amount.

Over time I lost count the times I had to check signatures on cheques & card transactions against the signature we held on the customers file. To do this was time consuming as most of it had to be done manually & in most cases I dealt with there was fraud involved. One of the best I saw was a cheque which had the wrong signature on which was to pay for 12 months road tax. I turned the cheque over & on the back was the car registration number & that was one of the very few occasions we managed to prosecute someone with the help of the police.

One thing with signatures for card transactions I would be wary of is that the onus of a fraudulent transaction will be on the merchant & not the bank. If it is a fraudulent transaction using chip & pin the onus then lies with the bank. The main reason for banks saying this is that you can check a signature but, you cannot check a pin number.

[WorthDoingRight]

Well, it is not in my opinion an ideal system for a static retail business who almost certainly can get a better deal from another merchant services provider. I think that the target market is for the occasional user who does not have or need a fixed service.

I can understand that we all believe the chip and pin to be safer but in this case our customers would I am sure not feel the same way. I think fraud is less likely with this device mainly because you are going to use it less often, wont be taking mail order on it and could I imagine photograph the signee whilst photographing their purchase.

At the end of the day it costs very little (£20 for the card reader if you never use it and if you do you get that £20 back as a fee credit) to setup and if it allows you to sell just the odd one or two items that you would normally have to turn away then it cannot be bad purchase.

[WorthDoingRight]

It must also be remembered that although the client signs for the transaction the card reader does read and verify the card by it's chip which is in itself a form of fraud prevention. It is significantly better than swiping the magnetic strip in the old days which were easily cloned.

It should also be remembered that credit card fraud is not the biggest fraud issue that banks have. I was told by a senior banking official ten years ago what the biggest fraud was they suffered from and it shocked me. I will obviously not be telling you all in here as that would be negligent of me - but I was trully shocked as you would be, as to how exactly this fraud was perpetrated.

[JMugs]

I like the idea of photographing the person for their emailed receipt, if somebody is trying to be fraudulent it would put them off, and for fairs etc you have probably more chance of being handed a duff note! That was certainly the case here a few years back, £20 notes were being passed at shows, as cash is expected, lots of faces etc they got away with it.

Janners

[Renniwano]

Love the idea that unlike the Paypal card reader that is in the pipe line.. this will not require someone to put their pin into your phone and potentially run off with it at the same time lol

[newsgroupmonkey]

A bit odd. I applied for a personal account and had it bounced
No bad credit here or anything....

[Renniwano]

Just reading through their blog etc.. and stumbled across this bit..

Does this not become an issue if your customer wants to pay by Visa.. and doesn't have a phone, or have their phone with them ??

http://help.izettle.com/customer/portal ... ment-#visa

[Ian M]

Just reading through their blog etc.. and stumbled across this bit..

Does this not become an issue if your customer wants to pay by Visa.. and doesn't have a phone, or have their phone with them ??

There is a similar device from the USA called Square Register which Visa have invested in. That is why it's more of a fiddle taking Visa payments as it looks like they are trying to promote the product they have an interest in.