MERCHANT SERVICES

Store and Forward

Many merchants operate their businesses exclusively, or in part, from offsite locations such as trade shows, swap meets, their customers homes or businesses, and other environments that don't provide the luxury of connecting a credit card terminal to either a power source, or telephone line, when accepting payment by credit card.

Typically, merchants will choose one of two basic options when deciding how best to accept credit card payments in those type environments. First, by taking manual imprints of cards at the offsite location then hand-keying the card account numbers into their credit card terminal later on, at the merchants' home or office.

Or, second, by choosing to use a wireless credit card terminal at their show or jobsite, and thereby preventing the need to do manual imprints of their customers credit cards, and from hand-keying account numbers later on. However, from a financial point of view, there are definite drawbacks to both options!

Taking manual imprints of credit cards, and then hand-keying account numbers into a credit card terminal at a later date, is extremely time consuming and is equally expensive. Merchant's pay higher card not present rates, and run the risk of unknowingly receiving a bad card at the time they take the manual imprint.

Wireless credit card terminals can certainly be convenient, and are as fast as countertop credit card terminals you'd find at a retail store, but are far more expensive to acquire. And although they do provide for lower card present rates, merchants must also pay additional wireless monthly service and transaction fees, in addition to their normal credit card processing rates and V/MC inquiry fees. The use of wireless terminals can also present the problem of very limited coverage areas.

Fortunately, there is a third option for merchants finding themselves faced with this type of decision! There are credit card machines that include a feature called Store and Forward, that also provide its' own internal power supply. This allows merchants to swipe their customers cards through a terminal that will print tickets for both the merchant and customer from it's own power, without the need of a telephone line, and thereby provide the merchant with lower card present rates.

The terminal would store transactions in memory and then later, when connected to a telephone line, automatically authorize all the individual transactions and then batch so as to generate the merchants' deposit. This option eliminates timely manual imprints, higher card not present rates, expensive wireless credit card terminals, and wireless monthly service and transaction fees. And is a viable cost saving option for many!