Comparison of mobile payment terminals
A year ago, I opened an online store and decided that I would immediately need a mobile terminal to accept card payments when a client receives their order (we are talking about courier delivery in my hometown, of course). Having left the fact of the prematureness of such a decision outside the scope of this article, I want to share with you the experience of using various types of terminals.
At the very beginning, the store had very little money and didn’t even want to spend several thousand rubles to buy a terminal. The search for free options for acquiring the device led me to one of the not the last Russian banks (one of the twenty largest in the Russian Federation), which provided the device without prepayment and with quite reasonable transaction processing fees.
Drawing up a contract with a bank is a topic for a separate discussion, it’s not all simple, but there’s nothing supernatural, unless the bank requires documents confirming the ownership or rental of the terminal where the terminal will be registered (this is especially impressive for an online store without an office). We managed with documents for the apartment where I registered ... Important, from my point of view, was one of the documents received from the bank - the rules of payment systems for working with their cards. There it was described in detail what parameters you need to pay attention to make sure that the card is not fake and what to do if one is detected, and much more is useful.
As a result, I received the Ingenico iWL220 device with a charger and a battery of a spare receipt tape, and a bank employee gave a briefing demonstrating the operation of the device. It remains only to insert the SIM-ku and you can work. The terminal accepts cards with a magnetic strip and with a chip, prints checks.
Actually, the most important thing begins. This terminal works like a Kalashnikov assault rifle. It is convenient, simple and reliable. During the year of operation, no problems were identified. At all. The terminal works on the principle of an assistant-wizard (I don’t know how to speak Russian) - each action is accompanied by a short instruction on the screen and all that is needed is to press a button: green or red. Everything is extremely simple and clear even to an unprepared user, which in principle eliminates the need to train personnel on how to use the device - it’s enough to show it once. One battery charge lasts me for half a year of work.
In general, the advantages of this terminal:
Minuses:
The store was developing, the number of orders was growing and at some point there was a need for each courier to be able to accept payment by card. By this time, one of the payment systems installed on the website of the online store began to offer an affiliate mobile terminal, and it was decided to pair it with the first one - banking.
There were no problems with the documents, all that was needed was extra. sign an agreement to the contract and pay for the terminal. A few days later I arrived at the PS office and got the terminal in my hands. It is small, lightweight, accepts cards with a magnetic stripe and with a chip ... but on this all its pluses ended, as it turned out later.
Firstly, it’s impossible to call the device reliable, because it is not clear whether it will work at a given moment in time or not. The device plugs into the phone’s audio jack and simply dangles in it. To be honest, every time I'm afraid to break something.
After each start-up, the terminal needs to be initialized - go to the settings, click the “Initialize” button, wait ... and maybe click again or reconnect the terminal and try again ... It is clear that the bank terminal is also somehow initialized, only it does it automatically , without operator intervention and without problems.
Secondly, it turns out that this terminal is also equipped with a battery and it also needs to be charged. It’s just not known when, because there is no indication of the charge level. That is, so that there would not be a sudden situation that you came to the client, and the battery was dead at the terminal, you need to charge it every time before leaving. It’s very convenient, yes ...
Thirdly, when you try to read the data from the customer’s card, the result is not guaranteed, because the initialization could fall off, but you won’t know this until you try to make a payment several times.
Fourth, in order for the client to receive at least some “check”, you need to enter a phone number and email address. None of the clients have agreed yet.
Fifth, unlike a bank terminal that will make payments with any card, the mobile terminal only works with cards that have online payments enabled. Again, I came to the client, but the payment does not go through ... I am not ready to spoil my reputation because of some piece of iron.
And sixth, hellish hell - the client’s signature on the phone screen. To say that this is inconvenient (even using a stylus), to say nothing, and if you remember about “First” - the terminal sits on the phone on snot — becomes completely sad.
Well, in the appendage - technical support on the vendor’s site does not respond fundamentally. They seem to have the ability to enter payment data using a QR code, but how to do it is not written anywhere.
As for me, there are more minuses than pluses.
Pros of the mobile terminal:
Minuses:
And what is the result. Marketers and PRs of mobile card reader vendors everywhere assure us that bank terminals are expensive and complex, and their mobile terminals are cheap and easy to use, but in practice for a single small online store everything turns out completely the opposite.
And about a separate SIM-card, which I wrote down in the cons for the banking terminal. With modern tariffs for mobile Internet, it is better to buy a separate SIM-card, which always has money and which you do not need to monitor, rather than depend on the state of your phone’s account. I use the tariff of one of the Big Three operators, specially designed for all kinds of sensors with the notification function, and out of 50 rubles in the account for the year of use, about 2 rubles were spent. Of course, you will have to spend time on the purchase of an additional SIM-card, but then there will be only pluses, because it is cheap and convenient.
If I had the opportunity, I would have returned the mobile terminal, since even those 2,000 rubles that had to be paid for it could have been spent with greater benefit for the business. But maybe I'm doing something wrong or my hands are growing from the wrong place, share your experience in using devices of various vendors?
Banking terminal
At the very beginning, the store had very little money and didn’t even want to spend several thousand rubles to buy a terminal. The search for free options for acquiring the device led me to one of the not the last Russian banks (one of the twenty largest in the Russian Federation), which provided the device without prepayment and with quite reasonable transaction processing fees.
Drawing up a contract with a bank is a topic for a separate discussion, it’s not all simple, but there’s nothing supernatural, unless the bank requires documents confirming the ownership or rental of the terminal where the terminal will be registered (this is especially impressive for an online store without an office). We managed with documents for the apartment where I registered ... Important, from my point of view, was one of the documents received from the bank - the rules of payment systems for working with their cards. There it was described in detail what parameters you need to pay attention to make sure that the card is not fake and what to do if one is detected, and much more is useful.
As a result, I received the Ingenico iWL220 device with a charger and a battery of a spare receipt tape, and a bank employee gave a briefing demonstrating the operation of the device. It remains only to insert the SIM-ku and you can work. The terminal accepts cards with a magnetic strip and with a chip, prints checks.
Actually, the most important thing begins. This terminal works like a Kalashnikov assault rifle. It is convenient, simple and reliable. During the year of operation, no problems were identified. At all. The terminal works on the principle of an assistant-wizard (I don’t know how to speak Russian) - each action is accompanied by a short instruction on the screen and all that is needed is to press a button: green or red. Everything is extremely simple and clear even to an unprepared user, which in principle eliminates the need to train personnel on how to use the device - it’s enough to show it once. One battery charge lasts me for half a year of work.
In general, the advantages of this terminal:
- free;
- easy to learn;
- easy to use;
- reliable;
- economical.
Minuses:
- execution of a contract with a bank;
- too heavy;
- separate SIM card.
Mobile terminal
The store was developing, the number of orders was growing and at some point there was a need for each courier to be able to accept payment by card. By this time, one of the payment systems installed on the website of the online store began to offer an affiliate mobile terminal, and it was decided to pair it with the first one - banking.
There were no problems with the documents, all that was needed was extra. sign an agreement to the contract and pay for the terminal. A few days later I arrived at the PS office and got the terminal in my hands. It is small, lightweight, accepts cards with a magnetic stripe and with a chip ... but on this all its pluses ended, as it turned out later.
Firstly, it’s impossible to call the device reliable, because it is not clear whether it will work at a given moment in time or not. The device plugs into the phone’s audio jack and simply dangles in it. To be honest, every time I'm afraid to break something.
After each start-up, the terminal needs to be initialized - go to the settings, click the “Initialize” button, wait ... and maybe click again or reconnect the terminal and try again ... It is clear that the bank terminal is also somehow initialized, only it does it automatically , without operator intervention and without problems.
Secondly, it turns out that this terminal is also equipped with a battery and it also needs to be charged. It’s just not known when, because there is no indication of the charge level. That is, so that there would not be a sudden situation that you came to the client, and the battery was dead at the terminal, you need to charge it every time before leaving. It’s very convenient, yes ...
Thirdly, when you try to read the data from the customer’s card, the result is not guaranteed, because the initialization could fall off, but you won’t know this until you try to make a payment several times.
Fourth, in order for the client to receive at least some “check”, you need to enter a phone number and email address. None of the clients have agreed yet.
Fifth, unlike a bank terminal that will make payments with any card, the mobile terminal only works with cards that have online payments enabled. Again, I came to the client, but the payment does not go through ... I am not ready to spoil my reputation because of some piece of iron.
And sixth, hellish hell - the client’s signature on the phone screen. To say that this is inconvenient (even using a stylus), to say nothing, and if you remember about “First” - the terminal sits on the phone on snot — becomes completely sad.
Well, in the appendage - technical support on the vendor’s site does not respond fundamentally. They seem to have the ability to enter payment data using a QR code, but how to do it is not written anywhere.
As for me, there are more minuses than pluses.
Pros of the mobile terminal:
- simpler design;
- device weight
- no separate SIM card needed.
Minuses:
- the cost of the device is 1950 rubles .;
- reliability;
- difficult to use;
- it is required to carry a stylus (not with the finger to the client to sign - this is generally tin);
- there is no indication of battery power;
- the application does not display the device status;
- does not accept payments on cards with the "online payments" option turned off;
- To send a “check” to the client, additional data is required.
And what is the result. Marketers and PRs of mobile card reader vendors everywhere assure us that bank terminals are expensive and complex, and their mobile terminals are cheap and easy to use, but in practice for a single small online store everything turns out completely the opposite.
And about a separate SIM-card, which I wrote down in the cons for the banking terminal. With modern tariffs for mobile Internet, it is better to buy a separate SIM-card, which always has money and which you do not need to monitor, rather than depend on the state of your phone’s account. I use the tariff of one of the Big Three operators, specially designed for all kinds of sensors with the notification function, and out of 50 rubles in the account for the year of use, about 2 rubles were spent. Of course, you will have to spend time on the purchase of an additional SIM-card, but then there will be only pluses, because it is cheap and convenient.
CHADNT
If I had the opportunity, I would have returned the mobile terminal, since even those 2,000 rubles that had to be paid for it could have been spent with greater benefit for the business. But maybe I'm doing something wrong or my hands are growing from the wrong place, share your experience in using devices of various vendors?
