Credit Card Processing internet failover in RMS 2.0

I recently installed RMS Store Operations 2.0 and have everything setup to use the Preferred Acquirer process with Vital for credit card processing. All is working well so far, however, internet connections are not totally reliable. I saw a post on here from more than an year ago that indicates as a backup to the internet you need an external modem hooked-up to a router that will dial out when the internet is not available. That sounds rather involved, complicated and costly for my small retail business. Are there other credit card processing backup processes people are using when the internet is unavailable? Or is the modem, hooked-up to a router the only answer?

Reply to
Kip
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If you have old dial-up cedit card terminals (programmed) you can use them to get approvals. We kept our old Tranz terminals and if our DSL line goes down we run the cards using the terminals for an approval code. In RMS, we then enter the approval code in the credit card payment screen, then swipe the card. This way you can close out your credit cards as usual (assuming broadband comes back up) and just purge the batch in the terminal. You could probably run the cards as authorization only, but we have only had to do this twice for a short period of time, so I have not checked into doing it that way.

Marc

Reply to
Marc

Thanks Marc! That sounds like a workable process. We currently don't have a terminal as this is a new store and our first go at processing credit cards. But if all else fails, we could get a terminal from our bank as a backup and try this process.

Reply to
Kip

I will tell you what we do. We take the manual swipe thingy and the paper slips. Then we ring up the customer under their name (we keep records of all customers) then we put the transaction on layaway with a tender of $0.00. We give the customer the receipt and print a 2nd whcih we staple to the paper credit card imprint. Then when the internet comes back up we recall from layaway and ring the cards up. It may sound complicated but it is not. I actually lost inet connection in my wine store over xmas new years last year. I set up a dial up on one machine to run cc on that machine only. You dont need the entire network to have inet just the 1 register that will ring credit cards.

Reply to
greenegrape

Kip,

I would highly recommend buying a stand alone dial up terminal from your credit card processor or your Microsoft Partner. What we do when our DSL goes down is ring the people up, select CASH as the tender type, then run their card directly on the stand alone terminal. This way you don't get charged extra for hand keying the cards later. Also, this is much simpler than having to hand key all of the charges when the system is up and running again. When you batch out at the end of the night, you'll know the cash is going to be short exactly the amount you processed through the stand alone terminal.

Reply to
Kris

Not only that but what if one of the cards that you have to hand key gets declined. If the card was stolen, or if it belongs to an out of town customer, you're SOL. Craig

Reply to
Craig

I recently installed RMS Store Operations 2.0 and have everything setup to use the Preferred Acquirer process with Vital for credit card processing. All is working well so far, however, internet connections are not totally reliable. I saw a post on here from more than an year ago that indicates as a backup to the internet you need an external modem hooked-up to a router that will dial out when the internet is not available. That sounds rather involved, complicated and costly for my small retail business. Are there other credit card processing backup processes people are using when the internet is unavailable? Or is the modem, hooked-up to a router the only answer?

Reply to
CptSoft

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