Credit card terminal operation is not universal

When you purchase processing equipment online, or with a company that you do not process with, it sometimes does not have an overlay and usually doesn’t have product manuals that come with it. One of the biggest support requests that I see, are people looking for product manuals for terminals, and quick reference guides. Unlike most other products in existence, processing equipment manufacturer can rarely provide accurate operating manuals for their own equipment.

Most terminals do not have functions hard-encoded in their keys, meaning that when a terminal is used with different processors and with different business types, the keys change. This is the reason that there is often no quick reference manual available for operating a terminal. Most processors do have some sort of manual on how to operate different equipment, but these are largely depending on how common a business type is and how popular the specific terminal is.

When you need a quick reference manual or user guide for a terminal, the best place to check is with your current processor, since they will know who your back-end processor is, and exactly what manual you need.

An example of multiple uses for one terminal: