Socratic Solutions is currently able to accept payments via electronic check (e-check), cryptocurrency (Bitcoin and more), peer-to-peer payment (Google Pay, Venmo, etc), credit card, and debit card. Upon request, established customers may also pay by sending in a traditional check.
For acceptance of credit and debit cards, we use a solution called WAAVE. Part of our agreement with them requires us to make the following information available to all our visitors:
When a transaction takes place through WAAVE there are additional fees involved. This is because your money is first converted to cryptocurrency before being sent and re-converted back to USD.
Debit cards incur a transaction fee which we cover. We do not believe in passing these types of fees onto the customer as it is a cost of doing business. However, credit card transactions may involve fees that we cannot cover because they are issued by your financial institution.
If your bank charges you extra fees for cryptocurrency purchases or runs them as cash advances, you will likely see these charges which could be as high as $10. For this reason we recommend using a debit card over a credit card whenever possible. If you must use a credit card, it may be worth it to check out our option of paying with a Walmart or Amazon e-gift card. This method has no associated fees.
An alternative method of paying using a credit or debit card is to first purchase an e-gift card from Walmart or Amazon and use that to pay for your order. This is done easily by entering our email address in the recipient field and your order total for the amount of the gift card. There are no extra fees for this method. Walmart e-gift cards can be purchased here while you can send Amazon gift cards from here. Note that we have no affiliation with either of these retailers, but we do get some supplies from them.
A third method of paying using cards is by using e-wallets or peer-to-peer money transfer services like Google Pay, Venmo, and other similar services that we canot mention by name. Your bank likely has such a service which allows an instant transfer of funds from your checking account to an outside recipient using their phone number or email address. We do not charge any fees for P2P payments, but the particular service you use may (most are free, especially with debit cards). We cannot currently accept Cash App or anything having to do with PayPal.
Cryptocurrency is our preferred method of payment and we automatically discount by 10% all orders paid this way. We primarily accept Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Dai, USDC, and Litecoin, although we can accept virtually any coin thanks to our cryptocurrency converter widget (bottom of page).
If you have the account and routing numbers to your checking account available, you can pay with e-check. When you authorize an e-check transaction you are giving us permission to create a one-time payment in the exact amount listed as your order total. We deposit your e-check into our bank just like a regular check, then it must clear your bank before the funds are made available. Because of this, first-time e-check orders are held until clearance.
Subsequent orders from the same customer are generally not held and ship out same-day like any other order would. In the event of an exceptionally high or uncharacteristically large order total, we may hold your order until we can reach you to ensure it was intentional. All e-check transactions are carried out inside an SSL-encrypted connection.
