Business Realities: How changes in technology have impacted payments at pop-up shops

(3 minute read)

I received an email recently which contained a number of suggestions for how to improve my website. Whilst the topic of this email wasn't new - most small businesses often get unsolicited correspondence from people who say they can get them ranked higher on search engines - the fact that it was an email from Shopify's AI powered expert, Sidekick Pulse, was new. That prompted me to think about all the changes in technology that have happened since I started Jed Phoenix of London in 1999 and how those technological changes have impacted small businesses.

One of the major shifts that I've seen over the past 27 years of being in business is how people pay for their purchases. In the early days, I used to take a lot more cash, which meant actually going into the local branch of a High Street bank to make a deposit. I accepted cheques as well, and used a manual zip-zap credit and debit card imprinter - both of which often had me crossing my fingers days after the customer had received their item(s) that the payments would actually go through ok! As we moved further and further into the 21st century, however, smartphones allowed for more secure transactions and ones that didn't lead to the need to queue at the local bank a few days after a pop-up shop. I started with PayPal Here, and then iZettle, which was bought by PayPal to eventually became PayPal POS. Somewhere in the middle of that, at the end of 2016, I had a rather brief dalliance using a portable card processing terminal. This involved paying a lower transaction fee, but a monthly rental price for the hardware. However, contrary to what I understood the deal to be, that monthly fee was increased after around 3 months. Luckily, I was able to jump ship, straight to iZettle. 

Digital transactions have their pros and cons. On the one hand, they are relatively safe, with little chance of chargebacks compared with the older zip-zap card imprint machines. Funds, minus a fee, of course, are often paid straight into my business bank account within a few days without me having to go into a bank. But not every business or self-employed person can get an account with PayPal, especially if they work in what is considered to be the adult industry. Paying a percentage of one's takings to a big multinational company whose interests and ethics we might not agree with is another downside of the ubiquitous nature of PayPal payment systems.

In 2022/23, I aligned my business banking more with my values and moved over to the Co-operative Bank. An added bonus was that they were developing a secure and encrypted bank-to-bank payment gateway called Go Get Paid which is free for Co-op account holders to use. I'd love to use Go Get Paid for every transaction, and I'm delighted when I can, as, apart from not having to pay the transaction fee, the funds go straight into my business bank account and it's far easier to reconcile the sale in my accounting system. But not everyone uses the mobile banking apps which Go Get Paid relies on, and some people want to pay by credit card for the points and other benefits it gives them. And, of course, Go Get Paid, just like PayPal POS is dependant on connection to either the Internet or mobile data...

How people pay for goods and services has changed drastically over the past three decades or so, and this is just one example of how technological changes have impacted my business since I started Jed Phoenix of London in 1999. In next month’s blog, I'll talk about how shifts in technology have changed how the administration side of business - from sourcing raw materials to doing the accounts.