Cash discount programs are a legal, safe, and cost-saving way to cut down on credit card processing costs at your small business. Enshrined into federal law for all 50 states, they provide a way to reward customers who pay with cash, to minimize the cost to you when you accept cards. There are certain rules you need to follow when you adopt cash discount credit card processing, but working with the right processor can make compliance a lot easier. That’s because processors who support these programs typically sell POS hardware that supports an easy approach to calculating cash discounts and applying them as appropriate.
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Setting Up a Cash Discount Program
When you offer customers a discount for cash payment, that discount needs to be taken off the sticker price. That means your credit card price tag is the one you need to advertise as the base price for the item. It is perfectly fine to show side by side pricing, but it’s not a cash discount program if you’re adding a surcharge for credit card customers. That’s a surcharge program, and it’s rules for operation and legality varies state by state. Mixing up the best practices for these two similar programs is a common pitfall for companies that are new to them, which is why it helps to find a supportive platform like the Clover Flex for sale when making the switch.
As your staff rings up each transaction, the prices will show as the price to credit card customers until someone decides to pay with cash. Then, with the push of a cash discount button, the totals re-calculate complete with new sales taxes, allowing you to smoothly move through a queue of customers without noticing the extra steps to your process.
Bring in Customers With More Payment Options
The best part of a cash discount program is that since the discount is applied to cash transactions, you can widen your support for electronic payment methods without incurring a lot of additional costs yourself. Just calibrate the size of your discount to accommodate the fees associated with NFC and other next-generation payment methods and watch your appeal to customers grow as you show you’re willing to meet them where they live when it comes to payment.
If you’re looking for a POS system designed to support today’s broad range of payment services, the Clover Station 2.0 is designed with chip card support stock, and there are a lot of additional peripherals and additional units that can help you customize your model into the ideal point of sale device for your business, no matter what you do.
Never Turn Away a Transaction
The cost of credit card processing has often led to merchants instituting restrictions like a minimum transaction size for card transactions, but many of those traditional programs operated outside the law. Some of them were even shut down by lawmakers. By contrast, cash discount programs are federally sanctioned as a cost-saving measure, and they also allow you to smoothly accept payment with a card under all circumstances, so you never have a customer walk away from a transaction because of a dispute over payment methods. In fact, since the cost of the processor is passed on to them, they ultimately have total control, and that’s a good feeling to give your customers.