IIRC, the grocery chain I worked for used to have an offline mode to move customers out the door. But it meant that when the system came back online, if the customers card was denied, the customer got free groceries.

▲

reaperducer 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

IIRC, the grocery chain I worked for used to have an offline mode to move customers out the door.

Chick-fil-a has this.

One of the tech people there was on HN a few years ago describing their system. Credit card approval slows down the line, so the cards are automatically "approved" at the terminal, and the transaction is added to a queue.

The loss from fraudulent transactions turns out to be less than the loss from customers choosing another restaurant because of the speed of the lines.

	▲	joshstrange 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		The POS I work on also has this feature. Line busters take the order and payment but we have a toggle where you can immediately “approve” and queue it up. If the payment fails then the person handing you your food will see it on the order and ask you for alternative payment. It helps prevent loss and speeds up the line overall.

▲

tcmart14 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yea, good old store and forward. We implemented it in our PoS system. Now, we do non PCI integrations so we arn't in PCI scope, but depending on the processor, it can come with some limitations. Like, you can do store and forward, but only up to X number of transactions. I think for one integration, it's 500-ish store wide (it uses a local gateway that store and forwards to the processors gateway). The other integration we have, its 250, but store and forward on device, per device.

	▲	fy20 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		In many places it's also possibly just a left over feature from older times. I worked at a major UK supermarket in the mid-00s, and their checkout system had this feature. But it was like that because that's how it was originally built, it wasn't a 'feature' they added. Credit card information would be recorded by the POS, synced to a mini-server in the back office (using store-and-forward to handle network issues) and then in a batch process overnight, sent to HQ where the payment was processed. It wasn't until chip-and-PIN was rolled out that they started supporting "online" (i.e. processed then and there) card transactions, and even then the old method still worked if there was a network issues or power failure (all POSes has their own UPS). The only real risk at the time was that someone tried to pay with a cancelled credit card - the bank would always honour the payment otherwise. But that was pretty uncommon back then, as you'd have to phone your bank to do it, not just press a button in an app.

▲

ransom1538 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I was shopping at a mall with a visa vanilla card once. I got it as a gift and didn't know the limit. No matter what I bought the card kept going -- and I never got a balance of what was on the card. Eventually, later that day it stopped. I called customer support and asked how much was left on the balance. They told me they had no idea my balance - but everything I bought was mine.

▲

onionisafruit 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What I gather from this is to always try a dead card first just in case the store is in offline mode

	▲	progmetaldev 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		They still capture the name on the card, so I would be careful about trying this, unless you can make use of a prepaid card.

▲

cyberax 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I remember that banks will try to honor the transactions, even if the customer's balance/credit limit is exhausted. It doesn't apply only to some gift cards.