Do you accept credit cards?

From Straight Pass Through Blog that deals with helping small businesses with the merchant accounts, comes this advise about swiping credit cards.

Did you know if you have to manually enter the credit card number or call the number in you pay more than if it is simply swiped through? While this may seem a little unfair because most of the time it is the person's credit card causing the problem, you still pay no matter what.

So in order to avoid the fees make sure that your employees are trained to try everything they can to get the card to swipe. One technique many businesses are trying now is to put a piece of paper around the card and swiping it that way. This will work on some occasions so it saves you the fee.

I would also recommend that you make cleaning the machine a normal ritual as part of your regular procedures whether it is when you open or close add cleaning the credit card machine to the list otherwise its money out of your pocket.