One of our biggest problems being a micro business that caters to other micro business has been getting paid on the spot for our services. Business to business customers don't carry cash like they used to and not many carry around check books. We were basically a financing company for lower denominated sales and because of this we ended up biting the bullet and signing up for a merchant account to accept credit and debit cards. That was a big help, but the monthly and service fees started adding up because we don't have a daily influx of customers. The majority of our invoices are bigger in dollar value and lower on volume. So we may go a few weeks before taking a credit card payment. However, not having the ability to accept credit cards may mean a missed payment or a longer wait for money owed.Then intuit introduced the GoPayment service for iPhone and we decided to jump right on it. Our company already used the Intuit QuickBooks Merchant Service anyway, so the change was easy. All we had to do was change to GoPayment, download the application and we could instantly accept payments via our iPhones. We later ordered the free slider, but the manual version worked great and was much easier than we thought. Plus, we don't have the monthly fee because our monthly income via credit card is below the $1000 limit. Otherwise, there would be a $12.95 fee per month (here's the pricing info), still lower than the fees we were paying to use the regular merchant service with the QuickBooks software. The ease of use and low cost has helped us immensely. Before we would have to wait for checks or wonder if customers would have the cash. Now, with everyone having a credit or debit cad we can accept payments on the spot and in the fabrication shop. We don't need to go back in the office, make the transaction while the customer waits and meanders around the shop. We can get our money, they get their fabrication orders and everyone is happy.

Today Intuit announced a new deal to provide GoPayment devices in Verizon stores. Here is the Intuit blog post.

Below is a picture of our card reader for the iPhone and a screenshot of the input page for accepting credit cards. Could not be simpler.