Creating swipe cards to work with other POS systems

[squid2004]

Hello -- I'm very new to the POS arena.

I'm faced with a dilemma. I'd like to create a gift card/swipe card that will offer 10% off (or other deals) to customers of select stores, but each store has a different POS system.

Is there some solution that allows one card/terminal to somehow interact with multiple POS systems? Or does it require some re-programming/plug-in for each of these systems?


What is the best way to handle this? Are there unique cards/terminals for this or is it handled all on the POS software side?

I noticed the olaha standalone ecard system, will this do more of what I'm talking about? I'd like to be able to setup the terminal/cards on my end, then provide to the retailer.

Any thoughts or advice for a newbie would be most helpful!

 

[DTSMAN]

I believe some credit card processing companies offer a feature that can handle this. They handle the balance tracking and everything. Of course, those dogs will take a cut as they do with the credit cards.

 

[squid2004]

Thank you for the quick response!

Hmmm... any idea how I find out what CC companies offer this? Is it a matter of contacting the merchant that the retailer is using?

I would need to make sure the cards are compatible I suppose among other things.

I'm assuming they would swipe their "gift" card, then swipe the credit card. Would this require any reprogramming of their current POS system?

 

[pkir13]

I recently ran into someone who was doing this same type of program but it was not linked to their POS. They were doing a standalone with Lynk Systems

You might want to find out more from them

 

[DTSMAN]

The ones that do this will provide a swipe machine for doing it.

 

[rpropro]

If all the systems read the same order, or if you can get them to read the same order, then no problem. Even though the customer1 field on one system would be customerfirstname on another, it's still the same info an would work for both.

Really, there is no stand alone solution because you would have to still enter it into the stores POS system, and to do manually you might as well have a paper coupon or to program it, you'll spend 10's of thousands per POS system.

You need to set up each POS system to take something on the card that can be the same thing that can be taken on the other systems. An easy solution is that the card only have the customer ID on it, it's swiped, the customer ID and infor pops up and the associate knows to enter a 10% discount based on the fact that the person had the card in the first place.
Depends on how intricate you want to get with your promotional deals too.