Avoiding Payment Disasters In Your Store

Picture this. It’s been a crazy week and you’re ready to hibernate in your cozy home and catch up on the latest Netflix shows. So, you rush to your local grocery store after work to grab some essentials – chicken soup, ready-made lasagna, and a salad (gotta keep healthy!). You approach the till and the cashier scans your items. As you take out your wallet, the cashier asks, “cash or card?” and you reply, “by card please”. The cashier, reads the total amount from the Point of Sale (POS), then enters an amount onto the PIN Entry Device (PED). You make a card payment whilst thinking about digging into that cheesy lasagna. The transaction is approved. “Enjoy the rest of your day,” says the cashier. “Thanks, you too!” you say, eager to head back to your car.

As you’re unpacking at home, you get a text from your bank that says, “Bank: R15 885.00 paid to Local Groceries”. Wait, what?! Your heart skips a beat and panic sets in as you realise this cannot be the price for your grocery items. Fuming, you have to drive all the way back to the store to demand a refund.

Junction@POS is the Transaction Junction POS integration product. It allows POS systems to connect to it in order to effect card payment and Value-Added Service transactions. It manages a PED for each till it services, soliciting cardholder input, for example, card presentment and PIN entry, and then transmits a message to the Transaction Junction processing environments for approval. It has four deployment options, as follows:

1. Lane: POS software and Junction@POS are deployed on the same hardware and typically utilize a USB/Serial PED. 1 to 1 relationship between Junction@POS and the POS.
2. Store Server: Single instance of Junction accepts multiple POS connections and drives multiple PED’s, typically USB connected to the POS device via CommsBridge.
3. Chain: A multi-tenant instance of Junction@POS servicing multiple card acceptor ID’s typically deployed on a shared platform accessible over a public or private network.
4. AWS Cloud: A multi-tenant instance of Junction@POS servicing multiple card acceptor ID’s deployed in an AWS environment accessible over a public or private network.