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I occasionally sell items via Kijiji and Craigslist in Canada, and while cash is convenient sometimes it's easier to do electronic transfers, or even have the ability to accept credit card in person. I have found Paypal and Square offer easy to use system for accepting payments electronically. They both allow credit card use.

I am wondering if anyone knows of better, or more competitive organizations that handle credit card sales/money transfers/Debit cards for better rates than Paypal (2.9%) and Square (2.75%)

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Square prices are hard to beat for a small operation. I've looked around when I was considering starting up a business, and they're definitely one of the cheapest. Paypal are the second best, but I do not trust Paypal in general.

However, looking locally may provide you some more options. If you walk in to one of the local banks, you may be able to get offers for merchant accounts with better rate, depending on your relationships with that bank.

You can also check out Costco merchant services, they seem to be quite competitive with the rates, but there may be other costs (they will probably charge more for equipment).

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  • Good call on costco merchant services. I am exploring this more. I already have an executive membership with them.
    – meltdownmonk
    Apr 15, 2014 at 12:46
  • This is the best answer for now. I guess the best thing would be a list of the options in this answer + the interac answer. I found the answer about interac transfers a little limited, but perhaps it's because my question isn't fully reflecting what I want to find, or it's too ambiguous.
    – meltdownmonk
    Apr 18, 2014 at 20:01
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Canadians can email or text each other money through Interac. It is fast - the longest it's ever taken for me is 20 minutes, often it's less - and secure. You don't need to know each other's banking details or even real names. I've used this to send money to my children, each of whom uses a different bank than I do, and they've used it to send money to friends to pay for concert tickets and the like. You add a security question so if someone else got to the email or text first, they wouldn't get the money. I also get an email once the transfer has gone through, so I know they got it.

Some banks limit this to $1000 a day, mine to $3000. Typically there is no fee for the recipient and $1 or $2 for the sender. A dollar on $1000 is way better than a 2 or 3% cc processing fee. But even for $30, a dollar is like 3% and you didn't need to apply for anything or set anything up, and your customers don't need a credit card or to trust you with their credit card details.

I keep meeting people who don't know about this. Everyone with a Canadian bank account and an email address or smartphone should know about it.

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  • This is useful information for when I have sales over $30. This is for debit money transers only?
    – meltdownmonk
    Apr 15, 2014 at 12:45
  • Bank account to bank account. No credit involved. You might even find it worthwhile for smaller amounts (the classic paying the babysitter example) just because neither side needs to have a credit card or register to accept them.
    – Kate Gregory
    Apr 15, 2014 at 12:57
  • I was thinking about this, and wondered about asking someone to pay a fee when buying something from me, but I realized I could just include the fee in the cost of what I'm selling.. so they are actually paying me less.
    – meltdownmonk
    Apr 18, 2014 at 19:59
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For people who frequently submit payments via PayPal, you may want to try and negotiate with them to use Paypal mass payments. Although the mass payment program is designed to send small amounts to many people, you can process payment batches of 1 transaction.

In the CA mass payment fees (paid by sender) are 2% capped at 1.25 CAD To CA and US. International payments are 2% capped at 24.00 CAD. No fees for receiver. A business PayPal account is required to enable mass payments.

When I mention this to customers, many are unaware Paypal's mass payment program exists!

https://merchant.paypal.com/ca/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=merchant/mass_pay

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I know this won't be a popular answer, but here goes: Bitcoin.

Regardless of how you feel about the long term prospects of bitcoin, it actually works very well as a way to transfer money with hardly any fee. You can go online, buy bitcoin, transfer them for a very tiny fee, then the person on the other end can cash out in their own local currency.

In fact, bitcoin is gaining a lot of popularity in some countries for this very reason. It is becoming more common for one family member to come to America or Eurpoe to work, then use bitcoin to transfer money to their family back home. This works so well because even international transfers have such low fees.

The best place to get bitcoins will vary depending on where you live. I'm American, so I use Coinbase. I believe Bitstamp is popular in Europe. I'm not sure about other countries.

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  • I will throw on the comment everybody who opposes bitcoin uses: it isn't the long term prospects, it is the short term volatility.
    – MrChrister
    Apr 19, 2014 at 15:41
  • While my opinion about this scam scheme is wellknown, I do want to point out that the OP asked about accepting credit cards. So other than using the opportunity to spam the thread - I see no benefit in your answering this question.
    – littleadv
    Apr 19, 2014 at 19:05
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    From the question: "I am wondering if anyone knows of better, or more competitive organizations that handle credit card sales/**money transfers**/Debit cards...". My answer provides a thorough explanation of how bitcoin can solve this problem, because it can be used to transfer money. How is this spam if it answers the question?
    – Aaron Wright
    Apr 19, 2014 at 20:55
  • @AaronWright It doesn't. You're just pushing your agenda of finding more victims for the pyramid scheme under the pretense of "money transfer". As long as you can convince someone to buy in the bitcoins - you can unload yours. The damage they'll sustain is not your problem. I understand that. That is why I downvoted your "answer". We here try to help people, not convince them buy worthless products that you need to sell.
    – littleadv
    Apr 20, 2014 at 1:37
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    Not everybody here is close-minded. While I do hold the same opinion as littleadv that Bitcoin isn't a great suggestion (the risk involved is considerable), he was too harsh in his comments -- perhaps because he really doesn't like Bitcoin. IMHO, he should stick to criticizing the answer and not leap to conclusions about the person posting it. I can imagine there are well-meaning, intelligent people who use Bitcoin and consider it reasonable because they haven't yet been badly burned.
    – Chris W. Rea
    Apr 20, 2014 at 5:22

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