In this module on professionally selling personal training, the speaker outlines the various payment methods personal trainers can offer—cash, EFT, and especially credit‑card payments, which provide instant funds. He evaluates several payment processors and gateways, emphasizing that credit‑card acceptance is crucial for modern trainers. Stripe is highlighted as the most beginner‑friendly option, with a typical fee of about 1.8% per transaction and strong API integrations that connect to CRM and marketing tools. PayPal is criticized for account holds on larger sums and a dispute system that always favors customers, making it unsuitable for trainers. The speaker also reviews other industry‑specific debit services such as Debit Success (which he found unreliable) and EasyPay (useful for subscription setups). Traditional merchant facilities from banks and gateways like eWay and Square are mentioned as alternatives for larger businesses, though they can be harder to obtain and may lack the same software integration capabilities. Overall, the advice is to choose a payment system that matches the trainer’s business size, fee tolerance, and need for software connectivity, with Stripe generally recommended for its ease of use and flexibility.
Chapters
Module 7, Professionally Selling Personal Training. Let's now talk about payment systems. So there are a few different payment systems out there and they can be actually quite different in the way they work. So some payment systems, and you basically, you want to set yourself up, obviously it's going to be a mixture of how you set up. So you're going to have people who want to pay cash, probably a lot less people who want to pay cash, especially these days. You're going to have people who want to do EFT and transfer money to your account. And then there's, you know, people are going to want to pay bank card or credit card, and you are going to want to be able to set yourself up so you can collect payment in every way. And one of the best ways is through credit card indefinitely. It's definitely one of the best ways you can collect money is through credit card because it's instantaneous. Someone makes a decision today, they don't have to go home, go on their EFT and transfer your money. You simply get their details and you swipe the card or get the details and put it into your system and you get the money out. So let's talk about some of those systems. So there's Stripe. By the way, I've used Stripe. It's not the main system we use here at Enterprise, but Stripe certainly is probably one of the easiest systems to get started in. I couldn't quote the amount of money they take from you. I think it's like 1.8% per transaction plus whatever other fees they have. But the point is you are able to take credit cards and you're able to set that up pretty quickly. So that's definitely one method that you can do. I'd certainly look into Stripe if I was starting again as a PT and I was new to the industry. I'd certainly be looking at Stripe as a way to take credit card payments. One of the ways that these people say a lot of the time, PayPal, I don't like PayPal. PayPal is great for buying things on eBay as a consumer. It is terrible if you're a retailer and it's even worse if you're a trainer. So what PayPal do is they will— if you take large amounts of money on PayPal, say over, I think, $1,000 or even $2,000— this happened to me, that's why I know— is they, they stop your account. They like suspend it until you present all this evidence and then they give you your money. Right. It's quite an annoying process to go through, especially when they put a hold on your account. Account and there's your money's in the account. So that's why I don't, I don't really rate PayPal. The other thing is if you do have any complaints and refunds and this kind of thing, they will always rule in favor of the customer despite it being the customer's fault or whatever it is. So PayPal, you know, it's a great place to buy things online. I wouldn't suggest it for people doing PT. Stripe would be a much better system. Then you have other companies who do debits in the industry. You've got like Debit Success. I don't like that company, but then I used them for a little while. We had some bad exchanges. Then you have EasyPay. And look, there's a heap of other ones out there. You can look at their fees. What you really want to look at is their fees, like what they're going to do. What, say, Debit Success claim is that they will get the money for you and they'll go to bat. We found that that just isn't true a lot of the time. There's still limitations what they can do with the bank if the bank refuses, then Debit Success really don't have much in the way. So EasyPay, again, they all have different systems. They all charge slightly differently. You can use them to set up. They'll do what they claim, which is set up a subscription program. What you're after is someone who's going to use their product is you're after the best deal. I think to set up an automated debit plan, it probably makes sense to use something like EasyPay where they can set that up for you. Or Stripe because you can, I think, I think you can on Stripe set that up with some plugins and some certain things. It depends on how big the business is, but certainly collecting money is important, collecting credit cards. So as a trainer, you certainly want to be able to set yourself up with collecting credit cards. The other way to go is you go to the bank and you get yourself a merchant facility. They are harder to obtain. And then in which case from a merchant facility, you get like yourself a terminal or you could even go to something like eWay. eWay is another great payment gateway that you can use to collect credit cards. It really just depends on where you're at and what the best deal is going to be for you and your unique circumstances. And I can tell you straight out, Stripe is going to be the easiest. It's not necessarily going to be the best in terms of rates depending what your business is, but it is going to interface with a lot of different programs. So whether that's like Infusionsoft or ActiveCampaign or when you're looking to grow your business, say, like digitally and have like a CRM, client management, relations management system, it is going to make things easier. Whereas some of the other ones, they don't have the same API capabilities, which is just a fancy word to say plug into the other software. They don't have the same capabilities. So yeah, Stripe is a good option. There's also Square as well. So there are some options for you in terms of taking credit cards.
