Wanted to blog about this really quickly, talking about payment methods. In general, for the average person here at the rescue, we DO NOT take checks.
Of course, there's always someone out there that heard, oh I took a check from so-and-so, so they think I'll take a check from them. If I've known you for years and you've been coming here forever, I may take your check. That's a very small number of people, and most of them I have their numbers saved in my phone. I'm sorry if that's not you. I love you all, but I don't want 250 new contacts every year. The average person that adopts, I see them once (at adoption), and never again (at least, not in person... lots of people do keep in touch). So, if they write a bad check, I'm out a good chunk of change, plus of course the chinchilla (or other animal), possibly cage, supplies, you get the idea.
There's plenty of other ways to pay! It seems that very few people have cash anymore, but surprise, we prefer cash! There's no fee associated with being paid adoption fees and supplies and all that in cash, and then I have change for the people who do pay cash.
We also do credit cards. Unfortunately, we're unable to accept American Express or any type of gift cards (I know, I know, I have those rebate gift cards from my dog heartworm meds too), but your average credit card or debit card -- VISA, Mastercard, Discover... we can take those! We get charged a 3% (ish) fee for every transaction, so if you charge $500 (which does happen... two baby chins & a cage), we lose $15 to fees. Not a big deal, but our profit margins are low as it is, so hence, we prefer cash.
And, we can do paypal. I'm happy to send out invoices, if people want, or people can just paypal to my email address. If I send out an invoice or people buy items on the webstore, it charges a fee as well... I believe there's like a 30 cent transaction fee plus about 3% again. Again, not the end of the world, but it does add up. Last year, we had ~$800 in credit card fees and ~$330 in paypal fees. For those of you doing the math, yes, that does mean we brought in a good chunk of change... but as we are usually pretty well hovering on the break-even line year round, that combined $1,130 would have been nice to have in the Fuzzy Fund bank account, rather than going towards fees. Now, with paypal, it is possible for people to send us money through the "friends and family" option. Technically, that's not for business transactions, so I don't ask people to do that, because I understand how it is. When we're talking about paypal, I usually give out my paypal email and tell them they can send a payment (and if they send it friends & family, awesome, if not, no biggie), or I can send them an invoice. Whichever is fine, that way no one gets all upset.
But anyway, these are your options! I think between cash / card / paypal, that covers most ways people want to pay. I have been asked about Chase Pay (I can't think of exactly what it's called... if you have it, you know what I'm talking about), but we don't bank with Chase, and their fees for banking are high, so I've never looked into it. But other than that, there's options, so if you can't afford a chin in cash, you can pay with a card, or paypal money over from a bank account, or whatever works for you. :)
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