I was thinking doing a few markets to see if I can shift some of my amazing art but will need to take payments by card as most people don’t have £200 in their pockets.
There seem to be a few options out there such as SumUp, SquareUp, Zettle. I was wondering if the great folk of STW have any experience of them.

I will only be using it occasionally, perhaps a dozen times a year so don’t want an expensive contract. I will be using it for amount less than £250 mostly.

Do I need a separate bank account or can the money go straight to my normal personal account?

Any advice or things I should be aware of?

Zettle seems to be the most popular. I was 50/50 between that and PayPal, went with PayPal in the end, it was pretty handy to have the money appear instantly in my PP account! However their readers are shite, another one has just crapped out on me. I phoned PP and they aren’t making them any more (obviously acknowledging this 🤣). They have bought Zettle so the guy just told me to get one of them.

Haven’t got one yet so can’t really give you the ins and outs, but if it works broadly similar to PayPal’s offering there’s no contract or monthly/annual fee, they just take a percentage of the transaction so perfect for occasional use.

EDIT: looks like the money goes to your (normal) account in 1-2 days, no PP account option anymore. Fee is 1.75% on contactless or 1% if (I think) they pay via PayPal through a QR code link.

Money can go straight to your normal account
Battery life isn’t great on some of them – so you’ll want a backup battery if using for more than a few hours without mains
Fees are all subtly different at £200 per transaction you’ll want lowest %age.
You’ll need a data connection. if your own phone isn’t great for that – then SumUp do one with built in sim card which is essentially on a roaming contract so connects to whatever signal it can find. Its quite a bit more £ upfront though.

Oh, and I suspect the spontaneous art purchase point is <200 quid!

Our cricket club uses Square. No issues with it that I’m aware of. All transactions go straight to club bank account.

Square by a long way here.
Had iZettle was ok reader died. Square had slightly better rates, the reader and app are much better than iZettle. Everybody I know who has had the PayPal reader has had nothing but bother.

Oh, and I suspect the spontaneous art purchase point is <200 quid!

I was pleasantly surprised as I always just ask the people what they want to pay. That is how I decided on my pricing points.

I will check the detail of the %s.

Seems straightforward then. Thanks

I have ordered a Square – let’s hope I can get it all set up properly when it arrives.

Got a SumUp box for our club’s TT. Really good – can’t fault it at the moment. Cheap box (£8 off ebay), 1.5%-ish commission which is pretty standard, really well designed app. I have the app setup with an employee account which that week’s volunteer can use with the charging app on their phone, also options to sell entries online etc etc. All worked really well so far.

I use SumUp and have had no problems.  I just have the basic terminal they were selling for £20 recently (I paid £30 about a year ago) which needs a connection to my phone to operate and can’t print receipts but they have pricier options that cover those.  1.69% is a pretty good rate too