Covent Garden stallholders break with tradition to accept PayPal payments
Stallholders at London’s Covent Garden market have broken with 800 years of tradition to embrace digital payments for the first time.
Mindful of the Christmas rush traders have signed up to the PayPal Here app and card reader, which links to smartphones and tablets to process credit card and PayPal payments.
It is the first service to be directly integrated to the online payments service, enabling people with the mobile app to pay directly from the software or to make and receive payments via a credit or debit card.
In a statement PayPal said: “The move spells the end for the traditional cashpoint dash, helping traders cash in on sales that would otherwise be lost when cashless customers promise to return but never do.”
Traders pay no subscription fee for the service but must pay £99 for the equipment and pass on a 2.75 per cent cut of each chip and pin transaction to PayPal.
Transactions involving the manual entry of card details or swiping a magnetic strip carry a fee of 3.4 per cent plus 20p.