I'm trying to get our theatres to start accepting credit and check cards. From being on the floor, I know our customers want to be able to use them and from my experience in the credit card banking industry acceptance of cards almost always increases sale transaction amounts and income offsetting acceptance fees. The problem, the home office disagrees. They are convinced this will not affect concession spending at all.

I've heard a couple people in other parts of these forums say it "has increased sales" and that they could "kick themselves for dragging their feet". I would be very interested in getting more opinions pro or con. If you're accepting them and they're not paying their fees, are you promoting their use and suggestively upselling concessions or just keeping the equipment under the counter available if necessary, but encouraging cash otherwise?

From my perspective, plastic money is fast becoming the standard many use for conducting transactions. RTS has a great integrated application and strong partner with Mercury Payment Systems! Help convince my boss or set me straight.

At first I just had it available with no promo of the fact. But after a month, and seeing how strong the demand was, I started letting the cat out of the bag.
It is definitely paying for it's self. If nothing else, we no longer tick off the customers who expect to use plastic, just like they do everywhere else.

We were having instance's too frequent for my comfort of a customer wanting to use plastic, not being able to, and leaving because they didn't have the cash.

It's been worth every bit of the expense.

And to put it in perspective, we are in a town of just under 6,000 population.

A thumbs up for us. Customers seem to be more apt to make impulse buys since they can use plastic. We have been accepting them for almost 6 months now and it has been nice not have customers getting P.O.'d at me or any of my cashiers. I actually had a customer bring a cashier to tears when she told him that we didn't take plastic. Basically the way I look at it is that I myself don't carry cash very often any longer since it is more secure to use a debit/check card.

Hands down, there is no reason you shouldn't be accepting credit and/or debit cards. My company operates in towns as small as 4,000 people and it pays for itself AND MORE in every location. Customers are no longer limited at the concession stand by the amount of cash in the wallet!

Plastic is the way of the future. If you don't accept it, someone else will... and I'm not just talking another theatre, but customers WILL choose other entertainment venues based upon plastic acceptance.

Bottom Line... You are losing money if you don't accept plastic!

We enabled credit cards yesterday, and much to my surprise 15% of our business yesterday was credit card business. I didn't think we would do that much yesterday, especially on our 1st day.

so definitely a thumbs up from the Lumina Theatre!!!

Thank you for all of you that posted replies.

I figured I'd post this to say thanks and possibly encite additional posts from others.

I have to agree with everything that has been said here. You are losing business if you don't accept credit cards. We just finished a record year for gift cards/certificate sales and I credit most of that to the fact that people were able to pay for them with their credit cards. If we hadn't had the credit cards, we would have had a lot more checks that might or might not have been good.
RTS: What's the chance that at some point in the future we'll be able to add instant check clearing to the mix?

Well as far as checks are concerned, I think they are a dead issue.
Rather than add check clearance to RTS, I think it would be a better choice to add Credit/Debit pay-pass ability to RTS. This is the death warrant for checks IMHOP.
Banks are going to do everything they can to kill off checks due to cost and fraud issues.

We like lots of other business's have stopped taking checks, they arn't worth the hassle.

Good Point. I would be happy with that also. How many problems did you have when you stopped taking Checks? I think it would be major in our case. We have some really good customers that sometimes write 3 and 4 checks every time they come in and they have all been good. It's ususally a first timer that bounces a check. Or course, they only do it once!

Practically no problems. We stopped taking checks the day we started accepting Credit and Debit. When we tell people, we always add that we take Debit or Credit, and they just say "OH" and pull out a card and pay.

If you have several good customers who write checks, continue to take from them, stop everyone else.

I never started accepting checks to avoid any issues with them. I am not sure that banks can eliminate checks anytime soon because most people still pay bills through the mail with them. Yes, they can use online services but then they can't postdate the check and blame it on the USPS, etc etc.

I'd like to stop paying employees with checks and give them theatre gift cards instead

Your neighbor is living in dream land. If he use's a Visa or Mastercard branded debit card, he has MUCH more protection with a debit card than with checks. All a theif needs from a check is the routing and account numbers, and the money is gone.

My daughter is the head of the fraud department for a large regional bank, and they have many, many times more problems with check fraud than they do plastic fraud. As I said before, banks are working vigirously to do away with checks. And it's working.

Banks are charging fees for cash deposits simply because they can. Not because of robberies. Banks are now a fee based business model. No longer do they look for their main profits through loans. They will admit that.

Take a look at this article.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10826914/

This old codger likes plastic. Checks? What is that?

On another related note: How long do the credit card slips need to be kept?

Customers can initiate a dispute within 90 days of the transaction, banks can initiate disputes and fraud investigations similarily. Between the time the dispute is initiated and when you get a request from your merchant bank for documentation can vary. I would recommend keeping documents for no less than 6 months, from the stand point of chargeback resolution. I would recommend consulting your tax or accounting professional on what the record keeping requirements are for other purposes.

I can say we have had the same results of as many others. We turned on credit cards this past weekend and have not recieved any signs yet so basically only people who pull our their CC natually are using them, and those who didn't know we did nto take them. We have taken 77 credit cards already! so a lot of people have been trying to use them and we were potentially turning them away if they did not have cash or not selling them concessions since they spent all the cash at the box-office.

I am taking a few but I have not advertised that we are taking them. I am sure more would use them if advertised but I am not seeing an increase in sales with the ones who do use them. I am inclined to have it as a courtesy option more than a sales drive. Perhaps I am wrong but there are no fees for accepting cash.

Since I initiated this post the one thing I can conclusively say is that there certainly area fees for accepting cash. The occur in a combination of losses due to drawers being short, potential theft (employee or otherwise), and cumulative hours of counting and balancing which shift after shift adds up on it's on, and adds up even faster when things don't add up and it takes a while to find those bills that were stuck together. The fees aren't paid directly in bank service charges, they are paid in additional payroll and other areas.

I see the security issue but being a small theatre and me being here almost all the time regulates most of those problems. But I do see the point and like it. I was just hoping people would buy more when using a credit card to offset fees and to increase revenue. It's early yet so maybe it will increase.

Have you noticed people spending more at the snackbar when using a credit card?

Having customers spend more takes a combination of converting from a theory of order taking to helping customers make purchases. Suggestive selling, up-selling, and add-ons combined with knowledge that they can use their credit/debit card is the magic of breaking the pre-capita barrier. If a customer isn’t limited to their change from tickets remaining in pocket, they’re more apt to take the better value while still keeping within an acceptable margin of their original cash-dispensed budget.