Text-to-pay

The counter at five o'clock is the worst place in the shop to take money: the customer is in a line, the advisor is on the phone, and the invoice is being read for the first time with people listening. Text-to-pay moves the reading and the paying to the customer's own phone, at the moment the car is done.

Three things change. Questions about a line arrive by text an hour before pick-up, when they are calmer. The customer paid against a document they could read, which is a stronger position in a later dispute than a signature on a receipt-printer slip. And the money is in before the car leaves, whoever comes to collect it.

One rule follows the link. A pay link that cannot show the card fee before the pay button cannot lawfully surcharge, because the card rules require the surcharge disclosed before the sale and not only on the receipt. Visa's U.S. merchant Q&A puts the disclosure "at the point of entry, the point of sale or transaction, and on every receipt", and limits a surcharge to credit cards at the lower of the merchant discount rate and 3 percent. The card surcharge entry has the rule in full, and the post on text-to-pay at the counter the states that restrict it.

In Wrenchy the pay link is a single-purpose link that expires and records the payment against the invoice kept as it was sent; where the shop surcharges, it shows the fee before the pay button.