I would never accept payment from a client via a credit card for attorney’s fees & costs associated with a bankruptcy, but debit cards with MC/Visa logo are basically a cash transfer.

I wonder why squareup specifically excluded bankruptcy attorneys from using its service.

edsager

The regular invoicing and collection features are pretty good too and allow me to accept payments by credit card, eCheck and ACH payments in person, by phone or via online payment form. I can also set up unlimited, free user profiles to help me get out of the bookkeeping business some day. The rates are pretty reasonable and customer support has been outstanding.

Of course, being able to deal with trust accounts is a huge issue. AcceptPay is able to support dual accounts for my trust account and operating accounts (client funds are deposited into my trust account and monthly fees are withdrawn from my operating account and/or charged to a credit card).

The only downside I’ve found is that while AcceptPay integrates with QuickBooks, that doesn’t include QuickBooks Online (unfortunately, I’ve found that a lot of things that say they integrate with QB don’t integrate with QB Online).

Hope this helps.

Brian

Perhaps that has changed from when you first looked at Square. From their current website:

“How much money can I accept?
Square enables you to accept card payments of any amount. No limits.”

Here in Indiana there is only one credit card provider who works with the lawyers’ trust account system. So no expenses or unearned fees (retainers, etc.), or PI judgment proceeds can go through any other system. However, if, like me, you do mostly family & criminal law on a fixed-fee basis, none of this constitutes a problem. My problem is that few of my clients have credit cards. I’ll look @ this “squareup”, though.

I think it is only practical for a smartphone or a 3-g IPad. Apparently it works via WiFi (since it works on an IPod Touch), but there is no WiFi available to the public in the court houses I frequent. I guess you could do it via MiFi, but now we are playing around with a lot of hardware. I use a touch & not a smartphone because you can’t take a mobile phone with you into jail & I often want my calendar, etc. when talking with jail residents.

There are actually a couple of vendors that specialize in merchant services (credit card processing) for attorneys. They will set it up so that all money charged will go into an IOLTA account, while the credit card fees come out of your operating account. I think that is the future… technology adapts.

My hourly rate is more than $125 (and I suspect most are), so this won’t be a viable solution until they raise the roof a bit.