What Are the Benefits of Portable Credit Card Machines?

Portability

The most apparent benefit of portable credit card terminals is that they are, in fact, portable. By breaking the reliance on physical telephone lines, merchants can eliminate the need for an expensive dedicated line while also allowing business to be conducted in locales--such as flea markets--where telephone lines may be unavailable. Merchants who work out of a virtual or home office and meet clients in the field can also easily and quickly process credit card payments without the need to seek out and plug into a telephone jack.

Reduced Fees

Without a portable credit card terminal, merchants who want to process sales in the field are relegated to taking credit card information on manual slips and manually entering the transactions into the terminal at a later time. To reduce the likelihood of a transaction being declined when it is entered in the terminal, merchants who process off-site must call an authorization center to ensure the card is valid, and each call of this nature incurs a small fee. In addition, many merchant account providers charge a higher fee for manually-entered transactions, further increasing the cost of doing business. A portable card terminal eliminates the need for both of these fees by allowing the merchant to quickly and easily obtain a card-present automated approval in the field.

Ensured Privacy

When merchants in the field manually take credit card information to be processed later, all of the information necessary to process the card must be written for later use. Because this paper has the potential to be lost, stolen or misused, many card holders express concern or hesitation about having their information recorded in a human-readable format. Portable credit card terminals help calm consumer fears and increase privacy by electronically processing the transaction while the cardholder is present, eliminating the need for human-readable copies of sensitive information.