This is a notification about the POSitouch Feature No Waiting for Credit Card authorization or No Waiting for Gift Card Authorization

Date; 11/11/2013

Software: POSitouch X.34 and above

The No waiting Option

Now, I know a no waiting option, heck Why Not?

Well The POSitouch Option under  Setup > Credit Cards  > Merchant Data > More (2) > No Waiting for Credit Card authorization or > No Waiting for Gift Card Authorization may not be the best choice for your needs.

RDC says:

1)      There are two types of authorizations that go out in terms of what the responses can be:

1. Credit cards can be either approved for the full amount requested or declined
2. Gift cards and Branded gift cards (cards that look like a Visa or MC etc. but are actually cards with a fixed dollar limit) can be approved for any amount up to the remaining balance on the card.   If you go out for $10 and there is only $3 remaining, $3 is approved.   This is called a Partial Auth.

2)      It is impossible to know for a branded gift card that it is a fixed balance card, ahead of time.

3)      Because of this, in order to retire a check amount properly, you have to wait for the response from one card before you figure out how much to authorize on the next card in a split payment situation.   The simplest case to consider is a customer who comes in and says “I found this pile of gift cards (may have Visa logos on them) in my drawer but I don’t know how much money is on them.   Please deplete all of these first and then put the rest of the check on my Amex.”   Or they could say, “split my check between these two Visa cards” one of which is a fixed limit gift card, unbeknownst to everyone.    I think you can see that you have to wait for each response and slip to print before doing the next split.

So RDC’s logic in this area has gotten more and more sophisticated and with the flag off that lets you swipe cards without waiting; But sometimes things will not come out correctly.   You must turn off that flag and the servers must wait the 3-4 seconds for each approval and slip to print.   Overall, it should not take them any longer to service a split payment as they have to wait for all of the printed slips anyway.   They now simply have to do them one at a time and wait.

Note that POSitouch gives you two flags, one for credit and one for gift.   RDC recommends leaving both off because of the branded gift card situation.