If your couples don’t have an easy way to pay you with credit card, I’m of the belief that you’re not only missing out on cash flow and cash, but you’re also missing out on the goodwill you would generate by making your couples’ lives easier.

It’s just so nice to be able to quickly and easily pay someone. Instead of copying and pasting BSBs and account numbers into banking software. Particularly as there is at least 60%, if not higher, chance that your client is receiving the invoice on their phone and copying pasting account numbers on phone is hell – where as Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Samsung Pay is just a delicious experience.

If you don’t read the whole article, read this: figure out how to make this a thing.

Apple Card

Here are ten reasons I think you should either enable credit card payments (if you already have the option) or look at extending your payment options to include credit card.

  1. Instant transactions: I’m assuming I’m not alone in meeting the couple who say they’ve made a deposit but they haven’t, or they made it to the wrong bank account number through a mistype or error. Credit card payment gives the couple and yourself instant notification that the payment has been made, reducing any questions to “did you get the email” or “are you awake?”
  2. Points: Many people, your author included, are fans of the frequent flyer or credit card reward points schemes. If I can pay for your thing with my credit card I would rather do that than pay cash or debit card because with my credit card I’m earning up to 1.5 points per dollar spent. So if I pay you $1000, I earn 1500 Qantas points, and 10,000 points is a free flight to Sydney, or a free business upgrade on some flights. I pay my credit card off every month, so it costs me nothing to earn frequent flyer points. We went nuclear on this idea when it came to paying the $15,000 for IVF, we got three new credit cards, each with a sign up bonus between 50,000 and 100,000 Qantas points, and minimum spends of about $3000 before the sign up bonus was paid out, so we split the payments across three cards, and walked away with about 260,000 Qantas frequent flyer points. That’s a round-the-world business class ticket. Yes please! so if we’re doing it, then your couples are probably doing it too.
  3. Actual need for credit: Not everyone is paying for their wedding with cash, some are putting it on finance and for some that finance is a low interest credit card. Don’t embarrass them by making them make a cash advance on the credit card to pay you.
  4. Ease of payment: I mentioned this in instant transactions, but sometimes I’m paying bills late at night and it’s nice to just click the invoice, click pay, let me credit card details auto fill from Safari, and click submit, and I know for sure that the bill is paid.
  5. Other people are paying: I can tell you from my own business that one in ten credit card payments are from a creditor cardholder that isn’t the couple. Sometimes it’s mum, dad, or other family. Or I’ve had people buy me as a gift for the couple, and sharing credit card details makes it easy for them to do that.
  6. Not all credit is credit: Most bank accounts are issued with a debit VISA or debit Mastercard card these days so the couple might not even be paying with credit, they just want an easy way to pay.
  7. The fees: The credit card processing fees aren’t that bad, and they’re a cost of doing business in the modern world we live in. I use Stripe and Braintree and they both charge me 30 cents plus 1.7% of the total. That’s $8.80 on a $500 transaction or $17.30 on a $1000 transaction. And if you invoice with Stripe (or if you build your own system like I have) then you can add the credit card fee. Most people don’t mind paying the fee, it’s quite normal to pay it when online shopping, and if they don’t want to pay it then there’s bank deposit.
  8. Xero: If you use Xero and link it with your Stripe account and accept all payments that way, it now auto-reconciles the payments for you, so it’s so easy!
  9. Two day transfer: I requested a faster transfer for Stripe, so now I have a two day transfer after the payment is made. With Braintree, it’s the next morning.
  10. This is the new normal: Paying with credit card via Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, or just plain old credit card is the new normal, so get on board!

This article was originally published on June 23, 2018 and has been updated for today.