How do you handle payments without WiFi at crowded events?

trixski
Tourist
3 0 3

I was recently at a show and took payments with my Shopify POS machine and iPhone6 quite successfully.  Then when thousands more people arrived at the show 4G was totally overwhelmed, the venue organisers hadn't arranged for the WiFi to be boosted and I lost 4 hours of selling on each of two consecutive days.  I have investigated having a mobile MiFi gadget but this wouldn't work without 4G connnectivity either.  What do other sellers do who have this problem?

 

Trixski

Replies 10 (10)

Don
Shopify Staff
2787 199 396

Hi there @trixski!

 

Don here from Shopify. 🙂

 

Sorry to hear that you ran into that difficulty when trying to sell in person recently.

 

While it is possible to use the POS offline to process non-card transactions, it would be necessary to have an internet connection at the time in order to process card payments (whether directly or via an external reader).

 

If you are able and willing to accept cash or other manual payment methods, and you can log into your POS on your device and load up your store before setting out, you would still be able to process those types of order okay offline and when you do get to connect again your POS and admin will sync and update inventory etc.

 

Check out the guide above for more details on what can and cannot be done offline with the POS and best of luck with finding a workable solution.

 

 

Regards,

Don

Don | Social Care @ Shopify 
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Gregarican
Shopify Partner
1033 86 291

We are looking at workarounds for just such a scenario if we implement Shopify POS in production. Couldn't we create manual payment types for Visa, Mastercard, etc. and then use them after calling in a credit card for authorization? We do have separate payment terminals that operate off hard-wired Ethernet. Patched into a separate Internet connection. Either method would allow us to process credit card payments and notate the same in Shopify POS, correct?

Don
Shopify Staff
2787 199 396

Hi there @Gregarican!

 

Don here from Shopify. 🙂

 

If you wish to process card payments external to Shopify while your POS setup is not able to connect to the internet you would need to process this as external debit/credit on your external card service and mark the payment as complete in your POS device.

 

Bear in mind that you would need to activate external debit/credit as a payment type in your POS settings (as detailed in that guide) and ensure that any payments you are accepting are fully processed by your external processor as it would be your responsibility to ensure you correctly capture funds for these orders from your customers.

 

These orders would then synchronise to your admin once your device connects to the internet again.

 

Check out the guide above and think about how you might have this work with the external card service you intend to use.

 

 

Regards,

Don

 

Don | Social Care @ Shopify 
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LERJR
Visitor
2 0 5

Wow after all these years there is still no solution for this? Square allows the merchant to process credit cards of a certain amount when there is no internet and sync later. I have lost hundreds in sales over the years because of this very same issue.  I'm very surprised that Shopify hasn't implemented a solution similar to square as this is a very common problem.

trixski
Tourist
3 0 3
Thank you for this. I’m surprised too!

Tricia
normanp
Visitor
2 0 3

This right here. We cannot move to Shopify POS while this remains a limitation. It's just not an option for us. 

bakoplan
Visitor
1 0 2

Don, we distribute our products in farmers’ markets throughout Southern California and are having difficulties in areas where the cell service is sketchy. Wifi is rarely available at farmer's markets, so we're dependent on using our cell phones connected to POS or as a hot spot to create a wifi link.

 

Likely as you’re aware, the native Shopify POS does not allow offline transactions, so absent wifi and cellular connectivity, we are unable to transact other than cash. That’s simply untenable and is forcing me to find third party solution, preferably one that integrates with Shopify.

 

Any recommendations?

sangsang
Visitor
1 0 1

agree. Everything was great until 40K of people showed up and it was a mess. A vendor uses square offline feature. Hoping shopify had something. I can see if it's a lot of money but under 100 dollars or something they should allow to cache it and if fails later then deal with it. I think that is what square does. I have to move to that for an options... I have wifi and etc, but nothing can keep up. You all need a solution.

Biffo
Visitor
1 0 1

We have both POS wisepad and zettle.  I wanted to switch all to POS as it has the promise of being seemless but as you say shows are notorious for being patching on data and WiFi.  Zettle works 98% time, we've just finished a 3 day show and managed 195 payments on zettle with only about 3 on shopify wisepad.  Dull as it means using 2 apps and extends checkout but at least you get the money and then adjust stock via POS afterwards. 

BrownBrownie
Visitor
2 0 2

WOW! 😨 I should have did more research, I just switched from Square devices to have all the analytics/inventory data in one place BUT not accepting payments without wifi is just absurd! I will be returning my devices because that is not a viable option at vendor markets/tradeshows the wifi is always spotty. ANDDDDDDD you have to have POS Pro to apply discounts 🙄