2 questions about Merchantlink...

[hooligan12]

I'm trying to get credit card transactions up and running on our new (used from ebay) micros e7 v2.1, possibly upgraded soon to 3.0 mr2.

reading through the posts on here, if seen the whole big to do about merchantlink and it's ridiculousness. i called our local micros office and they said it would be about 1000 dollars to get this software and set it up. my questions are as follows:

1. does merchantlink charge us a fee for using it on top of this initial charge and the fees our bank charges?

2. if so is there an alternative to merchantlink that will allow us to run cc through the micros terminals and still be pci compliant?

any help would be much appreciated, both of the times i have called micros they have refused to help me with any problems until i give them all of the restaurants info and pay them to reprogram and reliscense our product keys. (since we did not purchase the system from micros)

 

[DrZogg]

Hi,
Micros has only tested to 2.7.41 for PCI compliance. So 2.8, 3.0 > are not compliant. This does not mean they are not, they have not been tested at this point.
Here is the installation doc we use

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?o3ar0eh4rmdddat

This should answer some questions

 

[TobeThor]

#1 In the past Merchant Link did charge add'l fees but then Heartland Payment systems sued Micros (for forcing Merchant Link onto their end-users) and Micros settled when HPS got whacked with big fines due to their own security breach. How it stands today I don't know but it's a good question to have answered prior to implementing.

#2 There have been posts regarding Shift4 as an alternative to ML.

As a side note. I don't think it's realistic to think you can go w/o a relationship with the local Micros Dealer. The Micros POS is a proprietary POS system and eventually you will have to form/create a working relationship as you progress. Pro's and Con's of proprietary POS aside today's POS is more complex than yesterday's POS as you can process credit cards, offer stored value gift cards, implement frequent diner plans etc. Trying to avoid a relationship with the local Micros office will only lead to under-utilizing the POS you already invested in. IMHO.