Setting up your credit card machine for your business is quite simple. A business wants to ensure that they have a phone line that is dedicated to the credit card reader. The phone line can be the same at the fax machine or be a phone line dedicated to just taking credit card payments. When a business hooks up the credit card reader to their regular phone line, they could receive errors when they are trying to process a transaction and a call comes through. This is why it is a great idea to keep the phone lines separate. This is especially true for companies that know they are going to have a lot of transactions throughout the day.
The merchant account that the business is set up with will be able to send the equipment to the business. Usually, the merchant account company will have the equipment synced and ready-to-use for the businesses before they even plug it up to use. The business owner will need to check out all of the equipment that is sent to them to make sure that there isn’t any damage. This will help save them time before they start installing the equipment.
First, they will need to plug in the machine to a power outlet and then the phone line that is dedicated to the machine. If the machines has not been synced with their merchant account, they will need to call the company to advise that they are ready to have it synced. Once this has been done, they can power up the machine. Some machines may require that blank, rolled-up paper is to be inserted. This way, when a transaction is done through a credit card, the paper will print out a receipt.
Once the machine is fully set-up and ready to go, the business owner can try their first transaction. The machine will be able to advise the employees if the credit card payment is going to be accepted or denied. Accepted means that the payment went through for the given transaction. A declined transaction means that the customer did not have enough funds to cover the transaction, and they will need to find another way to pay for their products or services. Businesses can accept credit card payments with their equipment and access reports on a daily basis of the transactions through the merchant account company they are working with.