Mechanics and auto repair shops can easily accept contactless payments by using a point of sales terminal. However, there are certain considerations which are specific to this industry that you must understand before choosing the provider.
Auto repair and mechanical services merchant accounts are generally considered standard risk sectors by acquiring banks and payment service providers. You are definitely not in a position like a Kratom or CBD business. Most of the acquiring banks will be interested in onboarding you if your business is legitimate and your profile is clean as per the risk perspective.
The challenge here is less about getting approved and it’s more about choosing a setup that actually fits how your mechanic business operates on a day-to-day basis.
Auto repair shops and mechanic businesses have a payment flow that actually differs from other retail businesses. The jobs are often quoted in a verbal way, and they are also revised during the work. The actual payment is settled when the customers collect the vehicle. This means that your payment solution must be able to handle variable transaction amounts in a clean manner, and it should also support the ability to take the deposit upfront and further collect the balance once the job is completed. This way, it will ideally work across the shop floor and front desk without you requiring the customer to come to a fixed terminal.
With a wireless or mobile credit card terminal, you can easily solve all of this. Your mechanic or service advisor can bring the terminal to the customer, rather than asking the customer to go to the front desk. This will help you improve the checkout experience and will also help you to reduce the friction of collecting payments on larger jobs.
Contactless payment acceptance, such as tap-to-pay via credit or debit card, usage of Apple Pay or Google Pay, is now pretty much expected by most of the customers, and is these days available in all the standard terminals that you can deploy. The transactions under the contactless mode actually process faster than chip and PIN modes, which definitely matters when you have a queue of customers collecting vehicles at the end of the day.
For your larger repair bills that exceed the transaction limit you can call the customer to the counter and ask them to swipe the card and process transaction. This can be done without any additional setup.
For any mechanic shop that also sells auto parts over the counter or has got a small retail area, they can integrate a comprehensive point of sale system rather than just using a standalone compact terminal. This will give additional benefits of easily tracking the inventory alongside comfortably accepting all type of credit and debit card payments. However, it is only worth considering if the parts sales represent a meaningful portion of your total revenue.
Mechanics must pay a close attention to the chargebacks also. Although auto repair or the mechanic business is not considered a high chargeback vertical by nature, but dispute happens when the customers contests that the scope of work or the final bill related to the original quote do not match.
It is important for you to protect yourself, and that is why you must get authorization in writing before you start the work on the vehicle. You should make sure that you provide itemized invoices and also retain proper job cards with customer’s signatures on the record. If the chargebacks are filed by the customer, then these documents will work as evidence and help you to win the disputes. You should work with a payment processor that has got built-in chargeback alert tools. This way, you will get a notification in case a dispute is filed. This will give you the time so that you can prepare yourself and respond accordingly.
QuadraPay offers merchant accounts and credit card terminals to mechanic businesses across U.S., Canada, European Union, UK, Australia, and New Zealand. Whether you need a single credit card terminal or you want a more comprehensive setup for your multiple outlets, we can provide the same to you.
We will match your requirements to the finest mechanic merchant account providers. This way, you’ll get a good solution which will be cost-effective and will fulfill your business requirements. You can contact QuadraPay today to get more information about contactless payment acceptance for your auto repair and mechanic shop.