Credit card reader

It is common to see salespersons using a machine for reading credit and debit cards. These are called card readers or POS (i.e. point of sale) systems. Card readers use client server technology and IBM’s systems reached the market in the year 1973. Departmental stores started to use these systems during 1974.

UnifiedPOS was the name of the standard that came into being after ‘90s. ‘The National Retail Foundation’ led this standard. Fujitsu-ICL, Epson, NCR Corporation and Microsoft created OPOS which is the short form for Object Linking and Embedding technology – POS i.e. OLE –POS. It was the 1st adopted standard. The first release was during 1996.

During 1997, NCR Corporation, IBM and Sun Microsystems developed JavaPOS; the release was during 1999. It was only in the 2000s that the POS was able to run without needing software updates, since it was connected to the internet.

The card readers are either fixed or portable and the merchant needs to decide which would suit his business. There are many advantages that you can enjoy when you use card machines that are portable. Credit cards have made cashless payments easy and accessible to all. This advantage is further enhanced when portable machines are used, since it avoids the need for the customer to reach the office of the merchant.

When the merchant carries the portable machine to the customer’s place, he can be sure to get his payment. This avoids the delay associated with the customer stepping into the merchant’s office. The other option is sending invoices; this can delay the payment since it takes awhile for the customer to receive the invoice and after that also, it all depends upon the customer’s pattern of payment – some customers prefer to settle payments then and there while others take more time to pay.

The other benefit when portable card readers are used is the option the salesperson has when the card does not get read successfully. In such a situation, he can request for cash or any other card that the customer has. This would not have been possible if portable readers were not used and this benefits the customer too as he can be given the receipt stating that his bill has been settled instantly.

It is restaurants and departmental stores who benefit a lot by using card readers. Let us see how the system works in restaurants. The POS systems have computers, peripherals and registers connected to a network. The systems maintain payroll, labour related information and sales information. Their records are used for book keeping and accounting. The data can be accessed from corporate offices or others from different locations.

The computers (registers) communicate with a server which is the central controller (it is also called store controller). Wireless POS are used when orders need to be sent from multiple points to the server.

While life without POS cannot be imagined by personnel of large stores, they should stay in tune with the new types of readers that hit the market.