A local university with about 15,000 students expects that each student will spend about $400 per semester in campus outlets -- more depending on how flush they (or their parents) might be. The question is, is it leaving some potential spend on the table?
In the area serving the university, nearly half the businesses rely on dial-up connections -- plain old telephone service (POTS) -- to process the charges these students rack up during the semester for discretionary spending. These days, using POTS lines for credit-card and payment processing is akin to sending mail via Pony Express. Many of the local businesses even refuse to accept the university payment system because they prefer to use terminals that don't rely on landlines.
Landlines are slow, and in fast-paced environments like coffee shops it is uncool to keep customers waiting because of pokey payment processing. This issue, of course, isn't limited to university environments. .
From a resource perspective, processing payments over dial-up landlines is a waste of customer time, leads to long lines, and creates a negative sense of service. On this latter point, the customer feels slighted because the transaction takes so long to process.
POTS lines are no fun when service is knocked out and dial tone is unavailable. It's also a drag if numerous terminals share one POTS line, as is often the case in smaller businesses.
The refusal to change out a terminal that operates on landlines just doesn't make sense to me, not when doing so would decrease customer wait time. After all, the quicker the sales process, the greater the spend potential.
Ethernet-based credit processing terminals do a better job of sharing resources and process transactions faster than machines that rely on dial-up service. POTS remains a separate and now growing disparate network that really isn't proving or promoting convergence. But then again, people do often seem willing to buy buggy whips even though the horses they are riding are ill-equipped for the tasks at hand.
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