Venmo and PayPal are implementing transaction fee changes at the end of the month which will have an impact on small businesses that decide to continue using the popular online payment methods.
Starting on July 20, the transaction fee for PayPal will be 3.49 percent, plus 49 cents. And the transaction fee for Venmo personal accounts will be 1.9 percent, plus 10 cents, according to a report by Fox 4.
To those numbers into perspective, if one were to make a $500 purchase, the seller would lose about $18 using PayPal. With Venmo, the seller would lose just under $10, the report adds.
Now, businesses using the payment methods will have to decide if they want to pass the cost of the increasing transaction fees onto their customers, or do nothing and take the financial hit.
“Us, we’re willing to take the loss if that’s the case. But if not, if we need to raise our prices, we’ll raise them. Not as much. We just want to be a unique kind of business where we don’t charge as much,” said Caridad Marrero, the owner of Elevated Apparel by C&C, a small business in Lehigh Acres, Florida.
Marrero added that her company offers both PayPal and Venmo as payment options for its customers.
One landlord who has been collecting rent through Venmo for the last two years in Cleveland, Ohio, told Breitbart News that he will cease using the payment method altogether if he finds himself being impacted by any fees.
“If Venmo starts charging me transaction fees, then I’ll just go back to the way I used to collect rent: checks,” he said.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.