An easy but overlooked payment solution to avoid credit card risk and fees

It seems that suddenly with less than a week until the new credit card risk policies go into effect, small businesses are finally talking about the issue. I’ve covered the topic with my clients a couple of months ago and posted on LinkedIn and this blog on the topic from a low volume small business perspective.

But this post is simply about an often ignored electronic payment option: direct bank transfer or “ACH”. For those of us who issue invoices this is an easy, safe and inexpensive way to get paid. Some banks are promoting it directly but I use QuickBooks processing at $.50 per transaction with no other fees. There s no risk of “chargeback”. If you are already using QuickBooks, it seems to make sense to expand the use of this service. If not using QuickBooks, consider what similar service your bank offers. (If you want to consider starting with QuickBooks, I am a QuickBooks ProAdvisor and can offer a discount and/or free trial with the service. But keep in mind that you must be a regular paid QB user first before you can set up the bank transfer/ACH service).