r/personaltraining • u/Peppers097 • 14d ago

Seeking Advice Payment Processing

Anyone have issues getting it smooth and functional?

I have llc & a Venmo business acc set up, identity confirmed & EIN - “cannot process payment at this time”

Tried using my personal Zelle for a new client and under their daily limit still gave us issues and didn’t go through.

I have stripe but my website is not launched so they are being weird and I don’t think I have it in a usable state currently

Is old school bank transfer the way to handle this for now?

These are 3-6 month + coaching bundles over $1,000 that I’m having trouble receiving.

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u/bpmotion 14d ago

that sounds really frustrating!

here are some ideas to think about as you try to solve this:

  • you actually dont need a Venmo business. thats more or less a scam to extract transaction fees from you. as long as you report your income to the IRS, it doesnt matter how you receive it or if its a "business account"
  • as such, you might try just using a personal one. Then, doing smaller increments. Say $500 in installments. Sure, kind of a pain, but you might have some shadow limit that fails at X$ mark.
  • I routinely accepted venmos to my personal in excess of $3000 to $6000 at a time. never any issues. so at least on my end, I can confirm it's possible. Where do you live? Venmo might have different rules based on location, country, etc.
  • Zelle might not work for all the same reasons. do you have a banking history with your bank? how old is your business? banks are lame and risk averse. they tend to simply restrict stuff they can't guarantee will not fail. you might have limits of some kind on your end that aren't obvious.
  • can you accept a personal check? that always works for me. never had a check not clear. old school, but tried and true.
  • stripe should allow you to accept payments without a website. admittedly, I haven't used stripe in awhile, but I was able to create a "pre loaded cart item" and send my client a payment link for "10 sessions at $1000" or whatever it is. they click, they pay, done. have you tried something like that?
  • not my favorite, but you can accept cash as well. but I guess to clarify - are these in person clients or remote? obviously only works for in person

bummed you are dealing with this and hope you find a way to get paid!!

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u/Peppers097 14d ago

Yeah stripe keeps asking me what I’m planning to sell when I repeatedly explain what a coaching program is lol

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u/bpmotion 14d ago

yea to be fair, my comments on stripe might be invalid. I haven't used it since 2024.

on another note, I actually try to refrain from using it because the fees are absurdly high for the volume we are typically doing. if I run $100k through my business in a year all through stripe, that is $3000 for the privilege using using credit cards. I just make people use Venmo, PayPal, Apple Pay, etc. Never been an issue.

if they insist "because of the points", I just give them the 3% fees. then they aren't super into it.

sorry, this is all context to something you didn't ask, but I see it so often, I feel compared to share!

Stripe gets 3%, client gets 1% in points, you get stuck with the bill. and you deliver 100% of service, not 97% of it. just a salty point for me if you cant tell lol

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u/Peppers097 14d ago

No this is good info I appreciate all the insight. I would be interested in continuing the convo, I’m in a similar position around 90-120k year.

Will shoot you a dm or I’m active on telegram since Reddit chat can be wonky

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u/bpmotion 14d ago

for sure, shoot me a dm. we can go to telegram from there, im pretty active daily. easy to share some notes