Credit Cards

Credit Cards
We do not currently accept credit cards. Personal callers to our showroom may use debit cards such as Switch and Delta.
We were looking at accepting credit cards via our web site, using a secure server, but have shelved any plans for various reasons.
Most banks and credit card companies are very wary about transactions where the card-holder is not present, which obviously includes telephone and mail order methods.
There are several reasons why historically we have not offered credit card facilities.
One, for bullion coins, the credit card commission often exceeds our profit margin!
Secondly, we sell our jewellery and coins at very competitive "Cash & Carry" prices, so that card commissions would seriously affect our margins.
Most of our showroom customers find an alternative way to pay us. Perhaps 50% of showroom customers offer a credit card, over 99% find an alternative. To get the extra 1% (of sales), we would have to give away 3% of 50% = 1.5% of our sales revenue, or about 5% of our profit.

Credit Cards Increase the Cost
Credit cards increase the cost of most purchases you make. When you read that fraud costs the banks millions every year, it is incorrect. Fraud costs credit card users millions each year, because traders add the banks percentage charges to their prices. In the early days most banks and credit card companies would not permit traders to offer cash discounts or credit card surcharges to their customers. The result of this is that all customers, including cash customers, paid extra. The cash customers subsidised the credit card customers. some years ago the EU ruled that this was unfair, and outlawed it. There are probably some areas in the world where credit card companies can still dictate these unfair terms.

Commissions Vary
It is well known that credit card companies charge small traders higher rates than large traders. Commission rates vary from about 1% upwards. Only the biggest companies manage to pay around the 1% mark. Smaller businesses have to pay more, often up to about 5% for the main cards, and 6% or 7% for American Express and Diners Club. For online processing, the software companies who provide the service also charge their own fees, which can vary from about 1.5% up to about 10%. There are also set-up costs and service charges. Electronic terminals have to be paid for, and also telephone charges each time they connect to download and upload data.

More About Credit Cards
We increasingly get asked why we don't accept credit card telephone orders, or online ordering, so we will try to give a further insight into why we don't yet offer these facilities.
On all card-holder not present (CNP) transactions, there is full recourse on the vendor up to 12 or even 18 months after the transaction. If a card-holder decided they wanted to reject the transaction, they could claim reimbursement from their credit card company, who would ultimately be obliged to repay them, particularly as they had never signed a payment voucher. The banks therefore expect a guarantee from the trader.
There is currently no way for a trader to check that a purchaser is giving their correct postal address, therefore fraud is quite simple. As we sell high intrinsic value goods, we would be seen by the credit card companies as an obvious target for fraudulent purchasers. We did indeed, some years ago, detect and stop an attempted £10,500 fraud.
Our best offer so far for mail order credit card facilities has been from Roynet, who apart from insisting that we transfer our business banking to Royal Bank of Scotland, insist on us lodging a deposit of 25% of our projected first year credit card sales, with the deposit being adjusted in line with actual sales. So if we projected £20,000 credit card sales,we would have to lodge a £5,000 deposit. The more successful our credit card sales proved, the more we would be required to top up our deposit. Assuming we did £20,000 of CC sales in the first month, the annual projection would rise to £240,000, and the deposit would rise to £60,000. So Roynet would pay us our £20,000 less its commission of almost £600, and we would need to give them an extra £55,000 deposit.
If we were so successful that our sales hit £1,000,000 in the first month, we would have to hand over £3,000,000 of it to Roynet!
Financing a 25% deposit would cost us about an extra 2.5%, without even thinking about the cost of customer fraud.
Of course, we could do what most High Street businesses do, stick an extra 10% on our prices!

Credit Card Surcharge
We do accept credit cards in some circumstances, albeit rather reluctantly. On these occasions we make a 3% surcharge to cover our costs. To reduce fraud, we ask for the credit card instructions to be in writing, and signed.

Billing & Mailing Address
Please note, we always use secure processing for your credit cards, this includes name and address checking. We only mail to your credit card billing address except under special circumstances, and by mutual arrangement. The address you give us must be the card billing address, otherwise we cannot process your card payment.

There are some countries, including Indonesia, from which we will not accept credit cards at all. We also reserve the right to decline payment by credit card at our discretion.

Feedback
We are always interested in feedback and criticism. if you have any secrets to share with us, please feel free!