If your business is among the many exploiting their gains on the internet, you need to integrate a payment gateway into your website for easy and direct transactions. Brick and mortar establishments, on the other hand, require point-of-sale terminals for payments.
As the owner of such a shop, you might be thinking that once you’ve acquired a merchant account from a reputable payment processor, you don’t need to worry about the type of terminal they install. After all, they’re the professionals, right?
Your account provider might offer some help, but it will ultimately depends the terminal you pick for your credit card processing needs.
Types of POS Terminals
- Countertop terminals
Countertop POS terminals are suitable for merchants that interact face-to-face with customers in the business premises. These terminals will enable your clients to swipe or wave their credit cards onto a card reader to make the required payment. You can also ask for a PIN pad from your processing company, which will cater for debit and EBT card transactions.
Countertop terminals can also be implemented in a card-not-present setting. For instance, if you do business on the Internet, a customer can securely share their credit card information with you, which you can then key into the terminal and process the sale.
- Mobile Terminals
When your business involves delivering commodities to your customers, rather than having them come to you, a countertop credit card terminal makes little sense. Go for a terminal that offers the flexibility of completing transactions in different locations.
Such terminals vary from one payment services provider to another, but almost all involve an app, which you can download to your smartphone or tablet to start accepting major credit cards while on the move.
- Additional features
Your business might want from a processor than the typical credit card services, and your merchant account provider will, in most cases, be ready to provide for your needs.
For instance, if you operate a retail enterprise with an online presence, it’s prudent to look for a company that offers both traditional POS processing and virtual payment services over the internet. eMerchantBroker, for example, provides accounts which can accommodate both physical and virtual terminals
Interestingly, smartphone technology has popularized card-not-present methods, such as Apple and Samsung Pay. Your terminal of choice should, therefore, be able to accommodate as many forms of payment as possible