Booth rent or commission
Who owns the merchant account decides who carries the fees, the chargebacks, and the reporting.
Salons, barbershops, and suites
Payment processing for salons and barbers.
Tips on every ticket, clients who book online and do not show, and a question most shops never settle: whose account is each chair on? All three show up in what you pay.
No obligation. I follow up personally, in English or Spanish.
What matters in a salon
Where salon costs are decided.
The ticket is small. The structure around it is not.
The fee on the tip
A card tip is part of the transaction, so it carries the fee. Somebody pays it. Decide who on purpose.
Cards on file and no-shows
Storing a card for a no-show fee is card-not-present, and a disputed fee is won or lost on your records.
Booth rent, commission, and whose account it is
In a commission shop the stylists work for the business, and one merchant account for the shop is normal. In a booth rental or salon suite model, each renter is running their own business, and putting them all on the owner's account creates problems. The owner carries every renter's chargebacks. Income that belongs to the renter lands in the owner's deposits first. And the monthly fees are shared in a way nobody agreed to.
If you rent chairs, separate accounts for each renter are usually cleaner. If you are a renter on someone else's account, it is worth understanding what that means for you before a dispute makes the question urgent.
The processing fee on tips
When a client adds a tip to a card payment, the fee is calculated on the whole amount, tip included. Across a busy shop that is a real number every month. Some owners absorb it as a cost of doing business. Some pass part of it through to stylists when tips are paid out, which needs to be clear, agreed, and handled in line with how your staff are paid. Either way, it should be a decision you made rather than something you discovered.
Booking deposits and no-show fees
Taking a card at online booking protects your chair, and it changes the cost of that payment. A card entered online or stored for a later charge is card-not-present, which sits in a more expensive category than a card tapped at checkout. Where you can, collect the actual service payment in person, and keep the card on file for what it is for: the no-show.
When you do charge a no-show fee, the client can dispute it. What decides that dispute is whether they agreed to the policy when they booked, and whether you can show it. Your booking system should keep that record. Check that it does.
Retail on the shelf
Product sales are a second business inside the salon. Make sure the system you check out on tracks that inventory, and that product returns are handled in a way that does not cost you the processing fee twice.
Salons and suites around Austin
Salon suites and chair rental are a big part of how independent stylists work across Austin and the surrounding cities, which means a lot of one-person businesses each deciding how to take payments on their own. If that is you, the fee check works the same way: send last month's numbers and Luis will tell you whether they are fair for a business your size.
Free fee check
What did your chair or shop pay last month?
Find the total fees on last month's processing statement and enter it here. Luis will look at it personally and tell you, within 24 to 48 hours, whether it is fair.
- No statement upload. Two numbers are enough to start.
- A personal answer from Luis within 24 to 48 hours.
- If what you pay today is already fair, he will tell you that.
Before you compare quotes, gather these
- Last month's total fees and total card sales
- Whether you run on commission, booth rent, or suites
- The booking software your payments have to connect to
- How tips are paid out to stylists today
- How many no-show fees were disputed in the last year
Related reading
Common questions
Questions from salon owners.
Should each booth renter have their own merchant account?
Usually yes, if they are running their own business. A renter on the salon's account makes the salon responsible for their chargebacks and muddles whose income is whose. A commission or employee model is different, and one shop account is normal there.
Do I pay a processing fee on tips?
Yes. A tip added to a card payment is part of the transaction amount, so the fee applies to it too. How that cost is handled with your stylists is a business decision, but it should be a deliberate one.
Can I charge a no-show fee to a card on file?
You can, if the client agreed to the policy when they booked and the card was stored with their consent. Keep a record of that agreement, because a disputed no-show fee is decided on it.
Does taking a card at booking cost more?
A card entered online or kept on file for a later charge is card-not-present, which carries higher interchange than a card tapped in the chair. Tapping at checkout where you can keeps more of your volume in the cheaper category.
Can we do this in Spanish?
Yes. Luis speaks Spanish and can walk you and your team through it in Spanish.
Talk to Luis
Settle whose account is whose.
Call or text Luis between clients. It is a short conversation.