4 Reasons To Accept Credit Card Payments For Your Wedding Business
THIS POST WAS UPDATED IN JUNE 2024
The other day, I received an email invoice for my social media content calendar. I had paid it on my credit card and printed the invoice for my bookkeeper within seconds. It got me thinking about how convenient that was.
So easy! Painless even.
That must be how my clients feel when they pay for coaching and wedding planning with their credit card.
I know, I know. A lot of you are avoiding it. You just can’t get over the fees. You hate the idea of someone else taking even the tiniest bit of your income.
I get it.
I avoided it too, for about six years, and I kick myself for waiting so long. But it’s the cost of doing business, and the price of convenience.
No business is expense-less.
Think about the fees as the salary for paying someone else to handle the task for you. Just like your assistants on wedding day, your bookkeeper, or your cleaning lady.
Somewhat cheesy, but I can tell you how much I love scrolling my email for a second in my free time —AKA Mom time— and seeing payments have come through. And I didn’t even lift a finger. The automation this allows in my CRM Dubsado is a gamechanger. That money’s going straight to the bank. One less task I have to worry about. And as a working mom, I have a million other things to do.
JUNE 2024 UPDATE:
Prior to October 6, 2022, it was illegal in Canada to apply surcharges for credit card fees to customer. The practice remains prohibited in Quebec.
In the USA, surcharges are legal according to federal law, however you’ll want to check the details for your state. Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, or Puerto Rico do not allow merchants to impose surcharges. While Colorado allows a surcharge of up to 2% as of 2021.
So how is Dubado helping their users get on track with the new laws?
They’ve worked with compliance experts to make sure they’re facilitating surcharging legally and accurately. Read more about it here on their website.
This is a win for us, but possibly another deterrent for our clients. Time will tell.
4 Reasons To Stop Stressing The Fees, And Start Accepting Credit Card Payments For Your Wedding Business:
#1 - MY CLIENTS LOVE IT
First and foremost, clients love that they can earn rewards points by paying with their credit card. Offering credit card payments also saves your clients time because they don’t need to go to the trouble of writing and sending or delivering cheques, getting cash from the bank, or logging in to their banking systems and apps to send a transfer.
#2 - I SAVE TIME
Since my payment app is connected directly to my CRM, Dubsado, the system is automated. Automation is the name of the game, guys. Email reminders are sent automatically to my client, based on the payment schedule I set at their initial onboarding. They receive an email reminder, put through their credit card payment so much quicker, and it’s automatically applied to their invoice. (So email reminders will automatically stop.)
With most other forms of payment I have to log in and apply the payment to their invoice, as well as a step to deal with the banking side of things on my end. Worth noting, if you don’t manually apply a cash, cheque or money transfer to the invoice in Dubsado (or your other CRM), payment reminders will continue to email according to schedule. Which can be frustrating to clients, who know they sent a payment, but maybe you’re not handling admin another day, or it’s the weekend and you’re unplugged.
You can even further automate this by setting up recurring/auto-pay payments. This saves your client time because they only have to enter their payment information once!
Since I started accepting credit cards, the number of late payments has significantly decreased, to nearly zero.
#3 - IT REMOVES BARRIERS TO BOOKING
The faster you can accept a client’s payment, the better. Removing barriers that keep them from booking is key. And accepting credit cards makes that so much simpler. Your clients can sign on the dotted line and make their payment all in a matter of seconds. Bing, bang, boom. They’re booked! Other payment types add steps and give them more time to second guess and give in to buyer’s remorse or cold feet. Credit cards are absolutely an incentive for them to book with you over another wedding vendor or planner.
#4 - IT PROVIDES A SENSE OF LEGITIMACY
Do you pay professionals, like your dentist or your car dealership, in cash? Probably not. So if we consider ourselves professionals in the wedding industry, our payment policies ought to reflect that. On the flip side, do you pay your dentist or your car mechanic with an email money transfer, PayPal or Venmo apps? Doubt it. Accepting credit cards increases the sense of legitimacy for your business. There’s a level of trust inferred given that you’ve applied and been approved for such a payment service. Not to mention, if your competitors are accepting credit cards, it’s in your best interest for your bottom line and market share to do the same.
Don’t wait any longer! In fact, I challenge you to give it a try for even six months and see how much simpler it makes things.
If you already have a CRM, I suggest checking which payment system is partnered with. In my case, I use Dubsado for managing customer relations (proposals, contracts, invoicing, scheduling and more) and it links directly to Square. The process has been painless.
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If you’re on the fence about which CRM software is the right fit for your wedding or creative business, I highly recommend that you book a Dubsado demo and take a closer look. I love that their free trial is flexible, covering your first three clients, not a short couple of weeks.
Speaking of that Dubsado free trial, learn how to make the most of it right here.
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