Do it for smaller amounts then $2,000
Bigger amounts you want to be safe and take checks, or credit card via Bank Terminal.
PayPal does not âappearâ professional for clients when you are in the construction industry.
It would look like you have âsomething to hide.â
Hope I was able to answer that 
Good Luck!
The SolAir & Energy Team.
We collect payments using Square. The only thing I would say is that it is important to account for the fees in your pricing. We love it!
I would not recommend using credit services or pay-pal unless it was for material since you cannot dispute physical material. For labor, you take a risk collecting payment by credit card because the person who had the work done can call the creditor and say you did not do it, or do it how they wanted. So, the payment is retracted and the contractor almost always loses. If you do collect via Paypal or Foursquare, collect the money out of the account before beginning or continuing project. Make sure last payment is cash to be safe.
We have used it in the past to accommodate a client or to pay for media services and it was ok but will have to agree with the previous answer. Paypal comes off as somewhat unprofessional in the construction industry. Plus, for large amounts, Paypal can place an unnecessarily long hold on your funds. It wouldnât be a bad idea to look into credit card processing.
Iâve used square. Itâs a credit card processing account like any other. The amount is available the next day and the authorizations required by the customers are no different than any other processing equipment. The times Iâve used it, the customer have been grateful that I was able to allow them to use a credit card. One customer even boasted about his free miles. I can not comment on PayPal, however Iâve sold and purchased tons of equipment through PayPal and never had a problem.
Hope this helps,
Kevin Adams
Atlas Home Restorations
We use Square to accept credit card payments. Customers seem to like the credit card option. However, there is a 2.5% fee to swipe, and if you donât have the actual piece to swipe and you just type the credit card number into the app, the fee bumps up to 3.2%!
We use square for credit card purchases. The pros: you can accept ccâs. It is eay to set up.
The con: they take a percentage of your proceeds.
Also takes a few days to get into your account.
Brian Richards
BR Painting LLC
I have been using square app for couple years now and have processed large amounts at once. It works great for me. I dont have to pay an annual subscription for credit card processing and use square exactly when I need it.
It depends upon your situation. If you do not have a merchant services account (and card reader system) with your bank, then square and paypal offer a simple way to collect credit card payment. Their 3% charge is a bit more than the 2-2.5% you can get with a merchant services account.
Depending upon how many payments you process via credit card, it could be worth your time to set up a merchant account with your bank.
We have accepted PayPal in the past and wouldnât recommend it.
They have a heavily biased dispute process in favor of the consumer. If your customer pays you via PayPal and you do everything in strict compliance with the law, itâs still possible for them to receive a full refund by simply refusing to sign an approval of work performed and filing a charge back with PayPal. The first answer was correct in stating itâs fine for small dollar projects or even deposits but for any type of serious work, steer clear! Weâve never experienced a loss with it, but the risk is very high - too high to be offset by the simplicity and convenience when there are other more secure options that are nearly as convenient - plus their fees are astronomical.
Square is a solid option for accepting credit cards, but we prefer Stripe - itâs totally cloud based and thereâs no hardware to deal with. Anyone in the field with a smartphone can accept payments - without needing to have the dongle handy.
Hope this helps!
We havenât used PayPal but have used Square. The processing fees are a lot higher than a Merchant Bank account. Itâs 2.75% if swiped and 3.5% if manually entered unless you call them and negotiate a different rate. The biggest issue for us is that it doesnât allow you to take a down payment and leave a remaining balance! So if a customer wants to put half down on material, you have to make a separate invoice and thatâs a huge pain. I would look into just running everything through QuickBooks potentiallyâŚ
Regards,
KW Floors
I tried using PayPalâs merchant services previously and was not impressed; from the time you processed the payment until the money actually hit our account was very lengthy and never consistent. Iâve not tried Square Pay so I cannot speak as to that. Now we currently do not offer any merchant services; which is fine being as the lion share of our business is commercial contracts whom prefer to pay with checks anyways.
for the contractor there are to many pitfalls with paypal or square to entice me to use these services many a scam exists with both
Our company uses TSYS for credit card processing. We use an Ingenico Wireless field terminal (that reads chip cards and generates a paper signature receipt on-site). We also have an online gateway for remote transactions and those transactions do generate an-e-mailed receipt for our âout of our areaâ clients. It seems to be a good system for security, but we pay a bit more for this service. Our clients seem to be happy with the convenience.
I have used square a few times and itâs a very simple way to get paid with clients that prefer using credit cards, works great!
If youâre running less than $5000 a month in card transactions, square and paypal are fine - if youâre averaging more, you need to look at setting up a merchant account for the extra benefits and savings. If you need more info as to why and how this works, feel free to message me.
I would highly recommend! Makes it easy for customers to pay their stages on time and within scheduled time frames.
We used square in the past and it was great, however the fees were a little much. We teamed up with our local PNC and their merchant processing blew every other away. Happy to take credit every time from anyone interested in using it.
