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Terminal Feature – Store and Forward
These days, there are many options for credit card processing; wireless terminal, dial-up, ip, or virtual. You name it, it’s available. Last week I took a much needed vacation to Hawaii. After settling in on the plane, I have this ritual of finding the magazine that tells you what movie they will show before I decide on what activity I will be conducting on the flight; iPod, book or sleep. I opted for the book.
Shortly after take off, I hear a flight attendant say, “We will begin serving drinks, snacks, headsets and media players. We will not be accepting cash, just credit cards.” Does anyone remember back in the day, when you had to have cash to purchase an alcoholic beverage? I recall it being something like $4.00 for a beer and on occasion you would hear, “Does anyone have change for a ten or a twenty?” For this particular airline, those days are over. No cash, just credit cards.
Being in the credit card process business, I had to inquire about the terminal. I thought if I purchased a snack they might be more inclined to give me a tutorial. I proceed to purchase some chips. I handed her my card. She swiped it, handed me a receipt with my card along with my snack. I asked, “How does that terminal work?” I explained that I worked in the industry and that was the first time I saw a terminal being used on a plane. She said, “When we land, we plug in the terminal to a phone line and it will download the transactions for the flight.” She also mentioned they had an increase in sales because of the convience for their passengers. What a great idea. When, I got back from vacation, I started conducting a little bit of research on this feature. Some of you may be asking, “Do all credit card terminals have that feature?” Off the top of my head, I can only think of the brand –Verifone or Nurit. They have a feature that is called, “store and forward.” The teminal will allow you to swipe the credit card and hand the customer a receipt. That is the “store” portion of the feature and when you have an opportunity to connect to a phone line, you will be “forwarding” the credit card transactions for approval. Grant it, there is some risk involved because you may get a decline however it your transactions are less than $15.00, the risk will be minimal.
These days, things are changing so quickly. How we receive information is crazy with all the media outlets that are available to us. However, I think it’s great that manufactures are keeping up and are able to offer the solutions we need to conduct our business our way.