Retailers are starting to be pitched new post October 1 EFTPOS payments processing offers.
My advice is be careful.
Make sure you know who will make money from your decision.
Every dollar taken across the counter has more hands on it than most retailers realise.
Depending on the point of sale software in use, the software company may be taking a percentage of each sale.
Depending on how payments are set up, a payments provider is almost certainly taking a slice of every card transaction.
And some leases include a turnover clause, where the landlord takes a percentage once sales pass an agreed threshold.
Plus, there so sometimes a clip to be made by the party proposing a payments provider to you.
Make you know who will make money from each transaction you process and how much they will make.
None of those third parties, the POS company or the promoter of a payments offer, are doing the work in your business. The retailer is out there every day, bringing customers in, working the floor, and grinding out the sales. The fees come off regardless.
That is why the question is worth asking properly. Who makes money off the transactions in this shop, and how much?
Payments are singled out as the most actionable place to start. The goal is a payments arrangement at the lowest possible cost. A retailer paying less than the shop down the road is already ahead of it, on every single sale, without selling one extra item.
A cost plus model is a good situation. There is where the payments company charges you their actual cost and an agreed margin for themselves. This pricing is lean, focussed and transparent.
There is a timing point too. From October 1 there is a direct hit to margin rather than something passed on. Getting those costs down now is the practical response.
Ask tough questions. List every party earning something from a transaction, put a number against each, then work through them one at a time. The individual savings look small. They are fractions of a sale. Those fractions add up quickly across a trading year.