Ask HN: How do you take cc payments as a consultant?

2 points by jyu 11y ago ↗ HN

Assume you have a US bank account and corporation set up. If US clients want to pay you by credit card, how do you take that payment? What service or services do you need to sign up for to make that happen?

This is in the thousands of dollars per transaction. Is using something like Paypal good enough? Are there any hidden pit falls I need to watch out for?

2 comments

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dalke 11y ago ↗

The one time I did that I used PayPal. Otherwise I send a P.O. and get a check or wire transfer. It was a training course and each department wanted to pay for their own students. I made sure to let them know that I would be charging more, to cover the PayPal fees. They were fine with that. There was some paperwork to let PayPal know that I was a real company, but otherwise it wasn't a problem. The total was only about $2500, so rather less per transaction than what you are doing.

IanDrake 11y ago ↗

Freshbooks + a stripe account. The integration is perfect. However, you will lose ~3% of the total amount billed. I did this for my monthly SAAS clients ($900 per month/client), but my consulting clients pay via check or ACH (10-20K per month).

I'd stay away from PayPal. Just google PayPal Horror Stories.