Just how does a credit card machine work anyway?
If you’ve not had a credit card machine before in your business sometimes it’s not so obvious how the things actually work so I’m going to have a go at explaining it here in nice simple terms.
First off there’s the administrative business of how one actually acquires credit card machines in the first place which is often one of the least obvious aspects of the process. The means varies but basically requires you to have a business, then you open a business bank account and finally get one of the machines from your bank. That’s the process which most people go through but in fact you don’t need to get the machine from your bank nor do you need to get the “merchant account” from them either as both these processes can be handled by non-bank companies at, usually, much lower cost.
Once you’ve got the machine it needs to be plugged into your phone line although some new models have a built-in phone and on the larger scale you can get machine connected via your own computer network. Whichever way it is, this is the connection from your machine to the bank or rather the financial outfit dealing with the credit card processing for you.
If your contract is directly with your bank the money from credit card charges appears directly in your account, often by the next day. If it’s with another company then it generally takes a few days to make the transfer to your own bank account. Strangely refunds that you process take much longer to reach your customers account for no reason that I’ve yet discovered.
The business of swiping the card varies quite a bit but usually you enter the amount, swipe/insert the customers card, let them enter their PIN if required, and finally press the green button to process the transaction and once more to print a duplicate slip for them.
Simple, eh?
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