MJ for Credit Card Processing terminal?

[ajburkedc]

Has anyone tried to use their mJ succesfully to process credit cards through their CC terminal? I got my MJ on Friday and the first time I swiped a card, it went through in seconds. The following twenty attempts were unsuccessful. The CC terminal displayed a "lost communication with host" message. Has anyone tried this. I can't figure out why it wouldn't work if it normally requires a simple phone line to run. Tech support said it would not work. Had it not worked once, I would now believe them. There MUST be a away to make this work. IDEAS?

[jasonhills]

could use help with this myself

[crackerjack]

You're both asking for a heartache because getting MJ to work reliably in a situation designed for copper phone lines is doubtful. What you are thinking of saving in monetary terms does not compare to the anger and frustration you will incur.


Good luck

CrackerJack

[tony]

Has anyone tried to use their mJ succesfully to process credit cards through their CC terminal?

Agreed with crackerjack, it's risky running a business relying on MJ, imagine the customer's frustration as they're standing there waiting to take their purchase and leave, meanwhile you've swiped their card 20 times and your card reader is not processing the transaction? If you are processing just transactions (a short phone call), consider an ATA and a VOIP subscription. $60 for an ATA on ebay. Say it takes 30 seconds to process each transaction, so your telephone call will cost 1/2 cent or less. [edited next sentence for clarification] For the equivalent of your annual $20 MJ subscription, you can process 4,000 transactions with a VOIP subscription on an ATA. If you get a 2-line ATA such as a Linsys SP2102A, you'll have as second line for phone calls. Keep the MJ for calling family and friends.

[prestonlewis]

Credit card machines require a tcp connection so that all data gets received on both ends of the connection. If some data gets lost, TCP allows one end of the connection to request a resend from the opposite end.

VOIP like MJ uses UDP connections. Data is sent without any regard as to whether it is received or not. VOIP isn't picky. If some data gets lost with VOIP, no big deal. Callers usually can't tell the difference.

So VOIP is designed to expect lost data.
Credit card machines (and fax machines) expect to lose no data at all and aren't happy if data is lost or late in arriving. With fax machines, you can often reduce the transmission speed, like to 9600, and still have successful faxes over VOIP. I doubt your credit card terminal has a speed setting that you can turn down.

You shouldn't expect to be able to reliably use any credit card terminal or other data device like an alarm system phone line with VOIP.