Point of Sale Software

Here are some Articles from the Blog Subject - eftpos -

New EFTPOS monitoring

POS SOFTWARE

What the recent outages which brought almost all EFTPOS terminals down in Australia have shown is that it is very hard for a retailer or for us to determine what has gone wrong initially. 

We all know something is wrong, but what? Could it be the terminal in the shop, the connection or the EFTPOS network? What I find worrying, is from these recent outages, it became clear that many people working on the EFTPOS network for support did not know initially that something was wrong either. Then as the support lines overloaded, soon we all knew something was happening.

So what I  do like about the Westpac Presto Smart terminals is they have real-time monitoring.

What it does allow is the EFTPOS escalation team to have real-time monitoring on your terminal. So it allows them to check terminal battery level, transaction errors and the most important the connectivity status that your terminal sees.

Plus it also means that they can receive alerts if terminal issues are occurring as well, so they know more about what is happening.

This all will save us a lot of time if something goes wrong. 

Click here for more details.

 

 

 

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

Plan for EFTPOS outages

POS SOFTWARE

A few days ago EFTPOS went down, almost every point of sale software support bay like ours was hit by our clients ringing up asking what is happening. Yesterday Westpac went down in many places because every other EFTPOS provider was working we go even more calls what is happening. Unfortunately, there is little we can do once the EFTPOS goes down.

The reality is that a retailer cannot assume that their EFTPOS will suffer an outage every so often.

Note in England; they have a pretty good fix that seems to work well to stop these outages, they fine banks for outages.

What can be done when it is happening?

What I do suggest you do first is check whether it is your POS system or whether its a bank problem. Some banks, e.g. tyro have a status page here that tell you whether it is their bank's error. Also if you want you can subscribe so at least you will get a warning if a tyro scheduled maintenance is coming up.

Now also test, whether a payment can be accepted by another channel e.g. sometimes people's credit accounts, do not work but their debit accounts do work.  

What can be done before it happens?

You may be able to do something before it goes down so contact your EFTPOS provider and check with them if something can be done.

For example, many EFTPOS providers can supply you with a unit that has an Electronic Fall Back (EFB) mode. If so, this will allow you with some limitation and conditions to continue to process EFTPOS even when their network is unavailable.

Some EFTPOS units do allow a backup internet so you can switch either to a 3G mobile network as a back-up and/or can use WIFI. So if your internet goes down, the unit can switch to another internet provider. Just make sure it switches back with the outage is over.

Note WIFI is not generally considered secure so you may want to discuss this option with the bank in detail.

Hope this helps.

 

 

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

EFTPOS Stands

POS SOFTWARE

I really like this new stand that is being given out now to support the new Westpac Presto EFTPOS solution. Take a look at the specifications, I think you will be impressed too.

 

It is very professional looking, has a nice grip and its tilt is extremely good making it easier to use. This is my favourite but if you want to see the full range of stands now available, please click here.

If you want to know more about Westpac’s new integrated EFTPOS called Presto? Click here to find out more...

 

 

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

Uber VISA

POS SOFTWARE

I am wondering how these new ranges of VISA cards which I expect will be open to Australians soon will go?  Here is one such card.

Uber VISA

 

As it is only available to residents of the United States, so you will not see many of them right now.

One problem with the current VISA/Mastercard point system is they basically work on frequent flyer points which to a significant percentage is of minor interest as you need to buy a lot over a long time to get a reward. These cards most compelling feature is often the discounts of the services on offer; for example, this card offers a 4 percent rewards rate on dining out. Now if that is Ubereats and its restaurants that could be huge for many.  I know of millenniums that use Ubereats almost every night. Another plus for these millenniums is with these cards they can get 2% back on such products like Amazon, Best Buy, Netflix, Apple Music, etc.

The problem from physical merchants is they can in Australia only charge fees based on VISA and Mastercard as a group. Not that it matters as there is no way of knowing in advance that it is a premium card often we do even have a card, just a mobile and all we get back electronically is very general details, e.g. VISA or MasterCard. What is going to happen is that the rate on regular cards is going to go up as these premium cards rate goes up. Then these fees will go up for everyone. This is going to put pressure on merchants.

This problem needs to be addressed soon as already. I hear that Facebook announced that it is going to soon really push these cards. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

Having a fast till

POS SOFTWARE

Many retailers at the Point of Sale have a till which is the fast till. On this till,  they discourage any slow transactions. For example if you want to ring up items on account, you are encouraged to use another till.

At my pharmacist, I was surprised that now on their fast till they have this sign

EFTPOS only  

 

As I was going to pay by cash, I had to go to the other till, the slow one. In a way I am not surprised as this is a graph of the average speeds of EFTPOS in our point-of-sale system using tyro by type and day of the week. The lower the bar, the faster it is. The times are listed in thousands of a second, and as you can see with a standard (ethernet) connection in light blue, we are doing an acceptance in just over a second. That is faster then cash plus more secure. No one can take money, calculate the change and give it to the customer in a second. 

So the proprietors of this pharmacy have made the fast till EFTPOS only. 

 

Comments

Currently, we do about 50% EFTPOS/Credit cards and 50% cash. When that figure goes up to about 70%, then we will do it too. What is surprising me, is just how fast our cheque payments have dropped. We now have heaps of people that cannot pay by cheque.

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

Speed of Mobile wallet vs contactless Cards

POS SOFTWARE

Many smaller businesses are now using tap-and-go terminals for financial reasons as customers are much more likely to do small transactions, e.g. $2 using contactless more convenient and quicker as they do not need to enter in any PINs.

For this reason, I think mobile wallets will work even better in SMB businesses as people tend to be reluctant to go to their wallet to take the card out and since most people have their mobile handy, it will be extremely convenient for them to use the mobile instead like here.

Now here is it being used in practice these mobile wallets and look at the speed of the new mobile wallet over the contactless in speed for EFTPOS and Credit card transactions!

 

 

 This is 4x faster than contactless!!!!

<

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

AUSTRALIAN PAYMENT CARD FRAUD 2018

POS SOFTWARE

AUSTRALIAN PAYMENT CARD FRAUD 2018

This report now available makes quite interesting reading.

The most common type of credit card fraud occurs is called *Card-not-present fraud* and makes up about 87.5% of all payment card frauds. Sometimes the card company will not reimburse you for this type of fraud, so it is worth being aware of the problem.

Here are two examples but there are many more.

1) Someone buys and then quotes a valid card detail either online, by telephone or mail order and then later the owner of the card, calls and says "Hey what is this about?" I would suggest that if you take over the phone credit card details, you do so only with customers you have dealt with before,

2) I have heard of a merchant that got burnt when a person used a card in the shop that for some reason did not when he did a swipe work. The merchant then manually entered in the card details. Only later did the merchant discover that the card was counterfeit. In this case, I would suggest that you have a policy in the shop that if a card does not work, ask the customer for a different payment method or card but do not enter the card number manually.

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

How to avoid Point of Sale EFTPOS fraud?

POS SOFTWARE

Two people are required to make EFTPOS fraud. This is a particular problem with those people that do not have an integrated EFTPOS. It does happen accidentally too.

To make it work, the thief needs a person who pays goods and then signifies that it was paid with an EFTPOS. They then enter in nothing in the EFTPOS unit.  If you do not reconcile your EFTPOS amounts, you will never know that it happened.

Here is a report that can help you.

You will find it here marked in red.

 

Once there you can get a report like his that can reconcile.

 

Its in excel format so you can edit as required.

Some EFTPOS providers like Tyro EFTPOS have some incredibly detailed reports that you can reconcile. 

This will tell you when it happened!

What about a potential solution?

Knowing that it happened is only half the answer what you need to know is who is doing it. Once you find out when it happened, you can use our integrated computer/camera system, where you can press a button, and check one by one the transaction on the screen.

If you do not have an integrated computer/camera system, what you need to do is write down the times and do a search in your camera system. 

We have had a client recently that discovered about $8,000 in his small supermarket about five months was taken from him using this method.
 

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

Free Westpac EFTPOS offer

POS SOFTWARE

WestPac six month free EFTPOS offer

Westpac has offered our clients, particularly if they are with Westpac, some exciting news. For the next few weeks, they are offering six months of free EFTPOS fees.  For a grade A, integrated EFTPOS system its an extremely good offer.

As this promotion is only running for a few weeks - if you are interested, I suggest you get onto it ASAP. 

Click here for details.

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

Importance of good cameras

POS SOFTWARE

I spoke yesterday about good cameras, today the issue came up about skimmers which turned out to be an excellent example of why I do believe that all businesses need good cameras.

A skimming device

These come in many types and are widely available on the web. What a skimming device is, is an electronic device used by criminals that generally are put on an EFTPOS reader to read (skim) the information off on the magnetic strip of a credit card and then to capture the PIN number.

The idea is that a criminal comes to your shop, in a few seconds installs a skimmer then returns in a few days to your shop and retrieves the skimmer with your customers' credit card details on it.

Skimmers have been regularly caught around Australia.

 

Cameras

These people would never be caught without decent cameras.

Take a look, I think you will find it interesting. Two guys come into the shop, the guy in front distracts the cash operator, now look at the guy in the white shirt installing a skimmer. He took about three (3) seconds to install the skimmer.

Here is a discussion about the incident.

 

What to do.

I always give a test pull on any EFTPOS reader before I use it.

My suggestion to everyone is to put a marker all around the EFTPOS reader with texture, this can help as a skimmer would need to cover the mark and be in your handwriting, always have a camera on your EFTPOS unit and try to monitor it at all times. If something looks off, call your EFTPOS provider immediately.

 

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

EFTPOS - a tip

POS SOFTWARE

What can happen is a customer does a transaction,  pays using an EFTPOS card and is given an invoice. The problem can be if the customer's EFTPOS name does not match the name on the invoice. 

So what actually happened was when a customer queried the transaction and so left the retailer with the bank with a problem of how to prove that the transaction had been done by this customer. The invoice clearly showed that it was not the EFTPOS name.

What has suggested us that to stop this from happening, put in the delivery instructions that it was picked up by the customer's EFTPOS name!

 

 

 

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

Allpay

POS SOFTWARE

Alipay

Alipay is the preferred payment method for Chinese people visiting Australia. About 1.2 million Chinese tourists come to Australia each year and they spend an average of $8,000 per visit making them in dollar terms our number one tourist trade. Also, there are many Chinese nationals and students living in Australia that would like to use it,  so giving many of our clients' a good reason to offer this preferred Chinese method of payment. 

So we are pleased that sometime about February be offering a direct integration of Alipay. It will work through Tyro EFTPOS which as Tyro has no fees or contracts so it is easy for any of our clients to add this payment type if they want it. If you are interested let me know.

 

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

EFTPOS warning

POS SOFTWARE

One of my clients had the following happen to them.

 

They got a query from the credit card that one of their customers is claiming that a transaction was rung up twice and so they have charged the customer twice for the same thing.

When they investigated in their POS systems what they discovered was that they had done two purchases on the same day for different items but the value was the same as the amount claimed. 

Now what they had to do was show clearly that both these transactions were for something different and that they were different transactions.  The security footage was very useful here.

What it does show is how important it is to include enough detail to show that even though the transactions are for the same amount, that they are a different purchase.

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

EFTPOS with Tap & Save price reductions

POS SOFTWARE

What happens with EFTPOS and Credit transactions is that you get charged by everyone in the loop. For example, say the money goes from the customer's bank, into a transaction stream, which goes to another bank, the money is then moved into a new transaction stream, and then the money is transferred into your bank account, each transfer on this chain is being charged. So what happens is that each point of the chain is charging the next point of the route until it reaches you.  As you have no one to charge, you get the bill. 

What Tap & Save does, only available now with tyro EFTPOS,  is check what possible routes are available for the money to move from the customer's bank account to your account and then directs the money to be moved along the cheapest path.  The big plus here is that you save money without having to change anything. 

Overall the savings are in the order of 8.4% reduction in charges but this varies depending on what exactly is the route the money is travelling now. 

So I decided to see a benchmark of our clients EFTPOS over the past six months although I am still waiting for confirmation, I calculate that the savings with Tap and Save are 8.74% in our market space.

 

 

 

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

Alipay soon available

POS SOFTWARE

Alipay market share

Alipay is the largest online payment platform in China. It has been growing rapidly in China. 

Now with almost 1.4 million Chinese tourists visiting Australia every year spending over $10 billion a year. This makes them Australia’s largest source of foreign tourist. 

and the critical point here is that

Data from Nielsen, meanwhile, shows 65 per cent of Chinese tourists use mobile payment platforms during overseas travels, six times more than non-Chinese tourists. 

So it is very exciting that we will soon through tyro a direct integration into Alipay. We are hoping that it will be available to our clients by the end of the year because we would really like it in place before Chinese New Year when they tend to come big and spend big.

Here is the media announcement hot off the press with the details.

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

EFTPOS A TIP

Tyro eftpos

 

A lot of my clients do a lot of business taking EFTPOS payments over the phone (MOTO). It is a business risk, that most retailers know as the problem here is that in the event of a dispute it is the retailers that has to prove the cardholder approved the transaction.

The problem can be that if the shop is registered to do such MOTO payments, now let us say a customer comes in and buys some goods. They are given the terminal as above to process the EFTPOS and most salespeople purposely do not look at the processing of the transaction to reassure the customer that they are not looking at their security codes. What a fraudster can do then is cancel the transaction and while no-one is looking activate on some terminals the MOTO function. Then process the transaction. This will allow stolen EFTPOS cards to be used over the security limit. A short time later the retailer gets a query from the bank and almost certainly a reversal of the payment.

What I recommend is that you have cameras recording all EFTPOS transactions and if possible on the terminal that customers have access, disconnect the MOTO function.

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

With us your Credit Card Payments are Surcharge Free!

POS SOFTWARE

Our clients are our most foremost asset and providing them with the best service is what we strive to deliver. One way we do this is by not surcharging our cclient'spayments. We understand that our clients like using credit/EFTPOS cards so penalising them when they pay us, is annoying to tthem. So POS Solutions is a surcharge-free merchant, that means you are free to use your credit/EFTPOS when shopping with us without any extra fees.

Furthermore, continue benefit clients and will accept payments in the mode that our client is most comfortable with.

 

Telstra Outage 30/Aug/2017

POS SOFTWARE

Our helpdesk is being hammered now as Telstra is suffering a major outage which appears to be Australia Wide and it is affecting both the internet and phones. We have been told that it will take them 24 hours to fix it.

 

 

 

As you can see from the map, it is Australia Wide.

 

 

What does appear to help is changing your DNS server to 8.8.8.8. This, however, will slow down your internet a little if you do not change it back, although there are some other advantages to doing this. Details on how to do this are available here.

 

As far as EFTPOS is concerned, if you can switch to 3G, you should be okay. Details on how to do this with Tyro are here.

 

 

 

 

Speeds for EFTPOS on our point of sale

POS SOFTWARE

These are the average speeds of EFTPOS in our point-of-sale system by type and day of the week. The lower the bar, the faster it is. The times are listed in thousands of a second, and as you can see with an ethernet connection, we are doing an acceptance now in just over a second. What is interesting is that the days of the week made very little difference. Using a network (light blue) it's a bit faster on Thursday, and I have no idea why but if you look on the slowest day which is Tuesday, you will see that the speed difference is irrelevant as who would in practice notice about 0.05 of a second? 

 

What also is good is that even with the slower WIFI connection (see dark blue), EFTPOS it is being done in about a 1.3 seconds. Even the older orange units are between 1.4 and 1.8 seconds. Much of the slowness with the WIFI is because of the merchants' router and the Internet traffic in the location, not the EFTPOS. A good way of speeding up the EFTPOS, if this 0.2 of a second is too much would be an upgraded EFTPOS unit, put on a better router and leave the rest of the traffic to the existing router.

 

This was quite an improvement over last year, as you can see here.

 

 

 

The speed of EFTPOS with tyro that we now have recently dramatically increased overall.

 

How to handle dynamic surcharging

POS SOFTWARE

Surcharging is an extra charge levied on a customer at the point of sale for the cost of processing electronic payments. Dynamic is when it changes by pay type. Fortunately for our clients, we have a simple and safe solution for those wanting to introduce this fee, which is automatic with no investment or cost to set up it up, which can save their business money.

The amounts involved are NOT trivial. The Reserve Bank Of Australia (RBA) here which presumably the ACCC will use for a guide, stated that Visa or MasterCard debit transactions may cost a business around 0.5 per cent of the transaction value. Credit cards usually have a higher cost for businesses, and may cost the business up to 1-1.5 per cent for Visa and MasterCard. How they got those figures is beyond me, my figures based on some of my clients figures just on direct bank charges would be that for Visa and MasterCard debit and credit transactions about 1.65% which I think you should be using as a guide for your costs for an initial calculation.

Some points for NOT using surcharging

Almost all consumers dislike surcharges; one study showed "more than 90% of consumers want surcharges eliminated; one in four don’t return to a business if surcharged, and three in four tell others to avoid a business because it surcharges."

Cash is not free; it has to be in a collation, then counted, balanced, stored in a safe, then a trip to bank and then banking fees. Plus there are losses due to mischange, the increased the overall security risk of the premises, etc. The cost of cash handling and its associated costs in a business are commonly put down at about 2% to 2.5%, which is actually higher than the fees of the electronic payments. If so why discourage people from using cards with fees?

Some points for using surcharging

Surcharges allows retailers to offer cheaper prices as they are not subsidising those consumers who use more expensive payment methods.

Most people have a backup form of payment method, and if you offer them a choice, they can select the payment method that best suits them.

Some items the margin is so wafer-thin that they cannot be sold with some payment methods without surcharges.

Finally and for many, this is the biggest problem it allows retailers to offer more payment types, for example, American Express (AMEX), paypal and Diners, which a number of businesses do not accept due to higher costs. A lot of corporate cards are AMEX. Many people work in such organisations, and if they are doing company-related work, they need to go to a place that accepts AMEX. If corporate customers are important for your business, then you must accept AMEX.

I am sure you can add more to the list for and against.

Now assuming that you do want to introduce surcharging at least for some payment methods. We have two alternatives, Tyro is a good option here and we do recommend that you use it. It is automatic and easy to set up; the main problem is that it cannot handle most of the payment types, although it can handle the most popular.

However, our point-of-sale system can handle it all. This is how.

Go into the main menu, select Dissection Maintenance.

 

 

Now in Dissection maintence, where the yellow arrow is click the tab "Pay Types"

 

 

Where the orange arrow is you can read the existing pay types this business offers, note it does accept some of the expensive payment types like AMEX and paypal.

When clicked on paypal, look where the green arrow is pointing for what appeared.

In view of Australian standards, we do recommend that In Surcharge Status, you use "Charge Percentage" as shown here because that is what the goverment prefers although other formulas do exist here.

The $15 point, which is the generally accepted cutoff figure for micropayments soon unfortunately for most payment types you will not be able to use as the standards state it should be the same or lower then costs for all amounts. Although in this example, Paypal is not covered under the new goverment standards. As paypal rate is 30 US cents plus 2.9%, so what they did here is make it a bit higher under $15, 4% (see green arrow) and over $15 use the 2.9% (see blue arrow).

You will find extra details on this page too which I will discuss later.

Using this you can offer more flexibiltiy to your clients in their selection of payment types.

If you have any questions, or want to know more please let me know.