Offline Mode helps lessen the impact of network or communication outages by letting your business keep on accepting payments. Enabling Offline Mode means your terminal will create Electronic Offline Vouchers (EOV) and store the payments to upload to the network later. Your merchant bank controls the enabling or disabling of EOV so you should check with your bank whether or not you are able to use Offline Mode.
How does it work?
If your EFTPOS terminal encounters an issue connecting to the Paymark network, it will try a certain number of times before reverting to offline mode. If EOV is enabled, you’ll be prompted as to whether you want to process in Offline Mode with the screen displaying “PROCESS TXN OFFLINE? Y/N”. Select YES if you want to continue.
When processing offline, the terminal stores the transaction as an Electronic Offline Voucher until it can connect to the Paymark network again.
Using Offline Mode
Transactions follow the normal process except some customers will be required to sign rather than enter their pin. When you are processing offline all swipe card transactions must be verified with the customer’s signature on your copy of the receipt – including for EFTPOS transactions. Refund and Cash Out transactions are not supported in EOV mode. Your terminal can store up to 99 EOV transactions and a maximum value of $300 applies.
The customer and their card must be present. Once a successful connection has been made with Paymark, the terminal will automatically send stored offline transactions through for processing. If an offline transaction is uploaded and declined the full card number will be printed on your declined merchant receipt. You will need to take this receipt and the customer signed EOV receipt to your bank to dispute the transaction.
Taking an offline payment
- Confirm you want to proceed with an offline transaction
- Check card type is a valid type you’d normally accept
- Check the card hasn’t expired
- Swipe or insert card as usual (contactless may not work)
- Have the customer sign the merchant receipt – even for Cheque or Savings (if the EOV receipt prints the signature verification field it must be signed by the cardholder)
- Check the signature against the card
- Keep ALL merchant receipts to verify your offline transactions
When can I use it?
Offline mode allows for emergency processing capability – it is not designed to function as a secondary connectivity option (for example, poor mobile network coverage). You can use offline mode in the following situations:
- Telecommunication errors
- Paymark network unavailable
- Power outages
- System faults
Quick troubleshooting when you go offline
- Check any internet cables and phone lines are securely in place at both ends
- Check your internet connection (restarting your router or hotspot)
- Power terminal off for a few seconds, then switch back on and try a manual Logon
- Contact Paymark or Smartpay if you are still having issues
Tips for using Offline Mode
- No refunds or cash out transactions
- Customer and card present transactions only
- Transactions over $300 cannot be processed in EOV mode. Don’t split a transaction up in order to process on the terminal – contact the Authorisation Centre to process larger transactions on a manual voucher.
- Maximum of 99 vouchers can be stored in the terminal
- Make sure you stop using the offline process as soon as technical problems are resolved
- Some chip cards and contactless ‘tap and go’ may not work in offline mode – it depends on the card type and issuer
- The terminal attempts to go back online every 10 minutes. Once successful it will automatically upload the stored transactions to Paymark.
- You shouldn’t need to do anything to upload stored vouchers but just be aware you shouldn’t make any changes to your terminal until the stored transactions have been uploaded – if the terminal ceases to operate or the software is replaced before the upload process is completed, you’re at risk of losing your stored transactions.
Check with your merchant bank what rules they have around using EOV, and to confirm if EOV is enabled for you. To find out more about Offline Mode, contact the Worldline Customer Care Centre on 0800 729 627.