Shopkeep POS, avoid a common set up mistake.
Avoid a common misstep when setting up ShopKeep POS to integrate with a payment gateway.
As of the writing of this blog, industry sources are confirming Authorize.Net’s terms no longer prohibit electronic cigarettes, hookah pens or similar previously prohibited categories. You heard that right; as of right now Authnet is no longer banning e-cig merchants from using their gateway.
There are several tablet-based POS (Point of Sale) systems these days that allow retail merchants to process credit card payments. ShopKeep is one that we have been getting a lot of questions about lately.
We wanted to let you know about an important difference with ShopKeep that could cause big problems for you if your processor is not familiar with it. Shopkeep is great, and we have had some terrific feedback on it but you do need to set it up correctly. This issue is easy to address ahead of time, and doing so will save you a lot of headaches down the road. You don’t want to wind up like one retailer we recently spoke to who was missing thousands of dollars for two weeks, until the money was found and moved to his account!
Here’s the background on what went wrong and how to avoid that with your credit card processor:
When a POS system is set up at your merchant account credit card processor, they are many settings that facilitate the transfer of transaction data (that data includes the dollar amount, card number and expiration date). These settings determine, among other things, what happens with the funds that come out of your customer’s bank account.
Most of the time, you will want those funds to be both ‘authorized’ (verified that the dollar amount of the transaction is available in the customer’s bank account) as well as ‘captured’ (confirm that you would like funds from the customer’s credit or debit card account moved to your checking account) as well as batched out at the end of the day (letting the processor know you are done for the day and would like to be paid!).
ShopKeep has an ‘Authorize and Capture’ settlement or batching setting that is different than many other POS systems so, it is very easy to have your transactions authorized, but never captured! Without being captured, those funds do NOT make their way to your checking account although your customer still has those funds FROZEN!
The bottom line? Just double-check that your processor has things set to ‘Host Based, Time Initiated Settlement’. It’s all too easy to leave the default setting as ‘Terminal Based’ and without changing the default setting the ShopKeep POS will authorize your customer’s transaction, but not capture the funds so they can be settled and moved to your checking account!
Once again — confirm that your processor changes the default to ‘Host Based, Time Initiated Settlement’!
Please let us know if you have any questions about the ShopKeep POS, other POS systems or any of the more popular online payment gateways they integrate with, like NMI or Authorize.Net. We’re happy to help any way we can!
John Stevenson
John is the high-risk processing specialist here at Tasker Payment Gateways. If you have any questions about E-Cigs or other high-risk accounts, call him at 207-772-8737 or email him at John @ taskerpaymentgateways.com. Alternatively, you can contact us using the contact form below.