Jason Rudland - 31st Aug, 2023
Taking payment from a client can be difficult and stressful. During my time as a tradesman the vast majority of my clients were friendly, warm, nice people, but the ones I really remember are those who knocked me. The keen sting of injustice never leaves - at least, it never left me.
Had open banking been available then, I could have greatly reduced my stress and increased my bank balance.
There are a limited number of ways a tradesperson can take payment, and until now, each of them came with a sting in the tail. Cash is expensive and a hassle to pay into the bank. If you accept cash, a surprising number of people will ask you to commit VAT fraud, which is embarrassing when you turn them down. Having the cash on you for the rest of the day runs the risk of losing it.
A cheque is better, but still expensive and a hassle to pay in. Cheques bounce and are cancelled - even if they are honoured, they can take five working days to clear. Taking card payments solves these problems, but creates new ones - very high fees, 18 month contracts, waiting three days for your money, and the card machines often can’t get a signal or can’t get to the end of the day without running out of power (even if you buy the in-car charger). You must never forget to take the card machine out of the van at the end of the day, if you do on a cold night, the card machine will likely never work again. Then you are stuck for a week before you can be taking card payments again. Don’t even get me started on spurious chargebacks and exorbitant credit card fees.
Bank transfers are better than having a card machine, but still far from perfect. No one likes standing over a client while they do the transfer, and the client doesn’t like being stood over while they do the transfer. It’s a hassle to type in sort codes and account numbers. If what they type in doesn’t match your name exactly, their bank pops up a message saying it might be a scam - putting doubt in their mind even though you have just done a great job for them. The stress was off-the-scale when my client promised to do the transfer as soon as I left. So many left me hanging until evening or the next day. So many mornings I would be calling clients from the day before to remind them they hadn’t done the transfer.
You can be forgiven if you haven't heard of Wonderful Payments’ Open Banking instant bank payments solution yet, rest assured, in 12 months’ time no tradesperson in the UK won’t have heard about it - It’s that disruptive. It’s insanely cheap, simple, safe, secure and regulated by the FCA.
Here’s how it works: you complete the job for your client and use our app to create an order with just a few taps. Our app generates a QR code that you show to your client. They scan it with their mobile phone and it launches their internet banking app. Instead of typing in names, sort codes and account numbers, all that information is contained in the QR code. All the client needs to do is approve the transaction with a single tap. An instant payment is fired off to your bank from theirs and each of you get an alert straight away. And you haven’t even heard the best bit yet…
Wonderful charges you a penny per transaction (you read that right - 1p) no matter the transaction value. There is no percentage fee on top, like WorldPay, Barclays, PayPal, Stripe, iZettle and the others. If you'd like to compare that with your current charges, try the interactive cost comparison sliders on Wonderful's website.
There is no contract. The subscription gives you 1,000 transactions per month for £9.99 (remember: no contract, cancel anytime). When was the last time your merchant service bill or bank charges was as low as £9.99 per month? Never. Right?
If that doesn’t disrupt the payments landscape for tradespeople taking face-to-face payments, I’ll eat my hat. And, yes, it’s a plastic hard hat!
Why not give it a try? Wonderful offers a free trial, so you've nothing to lose.
