Do you have a lot of customers claiming you have charged them twice? You check your sales for the day and find you were only paid once, so what is your customer talking about? Dig a little deeper. Are you also experiencing duplicate authorizations, reject batches and/or “Communication Errors” on your credit card terminal? Could these issues be connected?
Here’s What’s Going On
Your analog phone lines may have gone digital. Many telecommunications companies are transitioning from analog phone lines to digital lines or VoIP (Voice over IP). Perhaps you have recently upgraded your phones, changed service providers or purchased software for your service center. All these changes could have impacted your phone lines, which directly affects the way your analog credit card terminal communicates.
Digital phone lines have trouble consistently communicating with analog equipment such as credit card terminals creating more static on the line and consequently dropping communication during a customer’s credit card transaction. This causes the customer to sometimes see two attempted charges on their online credit card statement from when the sale was originally being transmitted, and again after it was momentarily interrupted due to static or incompatibility with the digital phone lines.
Solution
New credit card terminals now come ready to process over an internet line connection. These terminals use a standard internet cable (cat5) to plug right into your modem or router at work. Processing credit card sales over internet lines vs analog or digital phone lines is not only faster, but also more efficient since you do not have to tie up or pay for an extra business phone line. Also, you can say goodbye to static and communication errors and therefore the issue of possibly charging your customer twice. Lastly, with the upcoming shift to chip cards, these new terminals also come equipped with chip card readers ready to accept your customers new and more secure chip cards as well as Apple Pay Payments.
Interested in learning more or taking advantage of upgrading your payments environment to a faster and chip card capable solution? Email us at info@windriverfinacial.com to learn more about how to upgrade to a new internet ready terminal!
