From 1 October, the credit card surcharge ends for Australian retailers. Payment costs that were passed on to shoppers will now sit inside the business. For a small retailer, that makes payment processing rates matter more than they ever have.
Tower Systems has been preparing its customers for this shift for months, helping many retailers switch payments providers for better terms ahead of the deadline.
Our advice comes from experience, and a desire to help small business retailers. We want to ensure the transition is smooth, safe and valuable for our customers.
The company can do this for one simple reason: Tower Systems is payments provider agnostic. The software does not lock retailers into one payments company. Retailers choose the provider and the pricing that suits their business, and they remain free to switch when a better deal appears. That control now flows straight to the bottom line. When surcharging ends, every basis point on the merchant rate is money the retailer keeps or loses.
Plenty of POS companies work differently. Some earn a margin from a preferred payments partner. Some take it further and charge a percentage of every sale that passes through their software. It is worth pausing on that model. A software company taking a slice of a retailer’s revenue is, in effect, taxing that retailer’s sales. The busier the shop, the bigger the tax.
Tower Systems does not do this. There is no fee based on revenue. The company’s view is straightforward: a retailer’s revenue is theirs to keep. Software should be paid for as software, not as a silent partner in every transaction.
For retailers reviewing their setup before October 1, two questions are worth asking of any POS provider. Does the software let the business choose any payments provider? And does the software company take any cut of sales, directly or through a payments arrangement? The answers reveal whose interests the software really serves.
Tower Systems develops and supports POS software for local specialty retailers in Australia and New Zealand, serving only indie retailers, not franchises or chains.
More on payments choice at www.towersystems.com.au.
At Tower Systems, we’re here: 1300 662 957 or sales@towersystems.com.au. If you’re in NZ, call 0800 444 367. Contacting a human is easy.
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