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>Most of the small businesses I worked at growing up in rural Oklahoma had mechanical imprinting machines with carbon paper receipts so that they could process

>Most of the small businesses I worked at growing up in rural Oklahoma had mechanical imprinting machines with carbon paper receipts so that they could process credit card payments offline. I wonder how prevalent this is still? I've heard of restaurants keeping one around just in case. I wonder what the fee would be for imprinted credit card transactions? My most recent Citi DoubleCash card doesn't have embossed numbers. Could I still do an offline transaction?

jws 9y ago
Just last year in the deserts of the American Southwest with spotty telecoms I made purchases with credit cards where the seller just made a rubbing of my card on the carbon slips using the edge of his cell phone.
johndbeatty 9y ago
Clover has had an offline feature for payments on all our devices (except our dongle/peripheral solution). It's very heavily used -- thanks to flakey ISPs, routers, WiFi, cellular, etc. We often see people go for a day or two offline. We let you set limits on count/amount/time of offline transactions. After you come back online we send email a report telling you how many offline transactions you did and how many authorized and didn't authorize. This serves as a feedback loop to encourage fixing connectivity issues.
dylz 9y ago
None of my cards are imprintable; they are pretty much flat text printed plus chip. My chipped debit cards are outright something like inkjet-printed or something, no embossing, completely flat.
dredmorbius 9y ago
The embossing is simply a convenience. Numbers retain their numericy when copied by hand, just as when physically imprinted or electronically transmitted.
Multicomp 9y ago
This is second-hand information but I have reasonable confidence in it: PCI-DSS (payment card companies) requirements forbid the slabs' use anymore. You instantly fail your payment card audit if you have one on site, and that can cause you to assume liability for all subsequent customer fraud incidents for the next X months, and in bad cases massive fines and possibly losing your payment processing equipment licenses (the ability to take EFT cards of all types) It's not considered secure storage of cardholder data, just as bad as if someone wrote down the cardholder information in full. Interestingly enough, mail-order magazines still try to get you to write down your CC data directly. I wonder if that is sanctioned?

jws 9y ago

Just last year in the deserts of the American Southwest with spotty telecoms I made purchases with credit cards where the seller just made a rubbing of my card on the carbon slips using the edge of his cell phone.

johndbeatty 9y ago

Clover has had an offline feature for payments on all our devices (except our dongle/peripheral solution). It's very heavily used -- thanks to flakey ISPs, routers, WiFi, cellular, etc. We often see people go for a day or two offline. We let you set limits on count/amount/time of offline transactions. After you come back online we send email a report telling you how many offline transactions you did and how many authorized and didn't authorize. This serves as a feedback loop to encourage fixing connectivity issues.

dylz 9y ago

None of my cards are imprintable; they are pretty much flat text printed plus chip. My chipped debit cards are outright something like inkjet-printed or something, no embossing, completely flat.

dredmorbius 9y ago

The embossing is simply a convenience. Numbers retain their numericy when copied by hand, just as when physically imprinted or electronically transmitted.

Multicomp 9y ago

This is second-hand information but I have reasonable confidence in it: PCI-DSS (payment card companies) requirements forbid the slabs' use anymore. You instantly fail your payment card audit if you have one on site, and that can cause you to assume liability for all subsequent customer fraud incidents for the next X months, and in bad cases massive fines and possibly losing your payment processing equipment licenses (the ability to take EFT cards of all types) It's not considered secure storage of cardholder data, just as bad as if someone wrote down the cardholder information in full. Interestingly enough, mail-order magazines still try to get you to write down your CC data directly. I wonder if that is sanctioned?