How Many Ways Can You Accept A Credit Card Payment?

There are more ways to accept a credit card now more than ever. For such a simple act - take payment, provide goods/services, receive payment in your bank account - there is actually a few layers of complexity to this routine task. First, we need to consider, do you accept cards in person and/or not in person? If you are actually seeing the credit card with your own two eyes at the point of sale - you are accepting cards in-person. Part B to this equation - does the credit card have an EMV chip (or not) and/or does your customer prefer to pay with their phone - where they store their credit card information and/or ApplePay or Android Pay. And/or does their actual credit card have contactless abilities? (Still with us?)

The Clover Mini pictured above demonstrates how many ways there are to accept a card these days. You can swipe a card - although if it has an EMV Chip - you really should protect yourself by actually inserting the chip to accept the payment. Lastly, you will see there is the option for "contactless" payment - this is where you can accept payment without swiping or inserting a card, but rather accepting the payment information via a technology called near-field communication. It is amazing, even to us, that there are so many different ways that businesses can accept credit cards. In order to provide these options to your customers, you must have a credit card machine or point of sale system that has the technology to accepts all these methods. If you have not updated your equipment in the last 2-3 years, we recommend that you consider updating your equipment to provide the quickest and streamlined checkout process for both you and your customer.