From this week we will no longer accept cash in our cafe. We have switched to a card only payment system by iZettle.
This is something we have discussed for a couple of years, but first really implemented now. We have the last couple of years seen a steady increase of card transactions. When we started to accept cards in 2010, they accounted for roughly 50% of the transactions. Last year they accounted for over 80%.
Why?
Our reasons and thoughts on why we changed to a card only payment solution.
- It saves a lot of time for our staff, not having to cash up every evening and go to the bank once a week.
- We will no longer have the problem – that we are short on change.
- Before we had an older and slower cash register. This new solution saves us a couple of seconds for every customer, that time can now be used instead on increasing services or taking new initiatives.
- It is a lot safer, as the risk for theft or burglary decreases.
- We actually get better data about our sales and everything is accessible in the iZettle app and on the webpage. We can for example see which products that are top selling and the number of recurring customers.
- It increases the hygiene level when our staff no longer need to handle dirty cash.
- We like to test boundaries and be early adopters. This feels like a given thing to do for us.
Overall we believe that the new payment solution will have a very small impact on the cafe. Disadvantages are that you can no longer buy things for under 10 kr. And also, it increases the reliance on the wifi connection to accept payments.
Will it cost us more?
From a business perspective we actually don’t think that this payment solution will add any additional costs. The transaction fee is roughly 2.75 – 1.5 percent (depending on the total transactions on a yearly basis). So there will be an increased cost in transaction fees in total, as the number of transactions will increase. However, we will save both time in cashing up and taking the cash to the bank. Also, the iZettle solution is actually cheaper then our past card options from Point, which had a minimum fixed cost per transaction and a monthly service fee. So in total, we think the costs will be a little less than before or the same for an card payment solution as for an mixed card and cash solution.