Hello there, southfieldsigns.

I see how having this capability can help your company handle customer payments more efficiently. I'll share some insights about this.

Accepting customer payments electronically and through card swiping is one of the advantage of using QuickBooks Payments.

If you don't have a payments account linked to your QuickBooks Online (QBO) subscription, you'll not be able to access those features. You have to manually input your customer payments instead or match them to their open invoices if the bank is connected to online banking. 

With that said, you can only use card readers if you have QuickBooks Payments linked to your QBO account. To set this up, see the detailed steps in this article: Set up a card reader for QuickBooks GoPayment.

Then, to lead you in processing payments using this, refer to this guide: Process payments with the QuickBooks Card Reader.

I'll be right here in the Community if you have other questions about accepting payments using card readers. I'd be glad to provide assistance. Have a good one.