If you’re running a mobile service business in Pacific Northwest and you need to accept credit card payments on the go plus you also want your vendors to pay deposits online before events, then the safest and the fastest starting point that we can recommend is to approach mainstream mobile payment service providers. Most merchants in the region use Square and PayPal because both of these are widely recommended for small mobile businesses.
They are easy to setup and they also work from phone or tablet and such devices also support in-person tap-to-pay plus online invoicing as well as payment link. Square is also considered a default payment processing solution, especially for vendors that need a clean point-of-sales application, hardware option and are looking forward to get simple flat rate pricing.
PayPal is a strong recommendation. You may be already using it for invoicing. All of these solutions come at minimum minimal setup and they have built-in taxes and discount options as well.
For a truly mobile operation, We would suggest that you should prioritize three different things. The first one is how you would like to take payments in the field, next how will you collect pre-event deposits online and what are your effective fees after tips, taxes and chargebacks.
Square and PayPal, they both let you send invoices and payment link to your customers so that they can make payments to you before events. Then you may also switch to tap-to-pay or keyed entry on the day. The fees are generally in the mid-range, that is between 2% for in-person transactions and around 3% plus a fixed amount for online and invoice payments.
Such rates are generally acceptable for most small service businesses when it is calculated against the convenience and the speed of approval. If your model grows into high volume and recurring billing, then you can definitely layer it with a layer in a dedicated merchant account at a later stage. But most of the mobile PNW vendors, they can definitely start with Square and PayPal because it gives stable merchant-friendly foundation without long contracts and and surprise terminations of the accounts.