Become a Home Based Travel Agent

Turn Your iPhone or iPad into a
Merchant Credit Card Processing Terminal - FOR FREE!
By Tom Ogg

Every now and then you find out about something that makes your jaw drop open it is so brilliant. That is what happened to me when I clicked on a thread entitled "Turning iPhone/iPad into a Credit Card Terminal" on www.HBTACommunity.com.

It immediately recognized what will become a very important tool for travel professionals. Here is how it works. You have met your client at Starbucks and just delivered documents and are about to collect your service fee. You pull out your iPhone and;

1. Plug in a little scanner device into your iPhone
2. Enter the amount of the service fee
3. Swipe your client's credit card

That's it.

Here is how it works. First, visit www.squareup.com/app on your iPhone or iPad and download the square app. Then, visit the site and activate your account. The process is quite simple, as it will request information about you including your social security number. Once you hit the "process application" button it will ask you three questions that only you would know. It obviously is processing a credit check on you and once it is done, you are then approved to process credit cards immediately. It is that simple.

I was advised upon completion that I could immediately process manually keyboarded credit card transactions, but it would be two to four weeks before I would receive the credit card swiping attachment for my iPhone. Once that I receive the attachment, I could swipe credit cards just about anywhere that I could make a telephone call with my iPhone. This means that I could transact business just about anywhere I wanted.

Processing a sale is simple too. Just keyboard in the amount, select "card" and keyboard in the cc number, expiration date, the credit card's security code and the zip code of the cardholder's billing address. Once the transaction is complete, it will ask for a signature to be entered on the touch screen. It will then ask if you want to send a receipt and if you choose yes, it will ask for an email address to send it to.

I am sure that when I get my credit card swiping attachment, that it will be even easier to use.

There is no sign up fees, monthly fees or user fees other then the actual processing fee, which are 3.5% for credit cards that are manually keyboarded into the system and 2.75% for swiped transactions. Both also have a $.15 cent transaction charge. These are the only costs to process transactions.