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Posted by Felix Okoli on Friday June 15, 2012 15:40:31:

Nigeria is going cashless beginning with Lagos in accordance with the CBN directive for businesses and banks. Nowadays, banks are even giving out free P.O.S. machines to reputable customers so that they may find a more convenient means to receive payments from their clients.

What is a P.O.S. machine?
A Point of Sale (P.O.S.) machine is a terminal, a box that allows a merchant to accept payments by means of cards from his customers. It works a bit like an ATM machine except that in this case, the machine is designed to only accept payments on behalf of the merchant which is most cases is the registered company which has an account with the bank.

How does the POS machines really work?
Well it works like this, after powering on, a buyer is able to use his ATM or acceptable debit card to make payment by using his PIN. The merchant accounts get credited and there is a notification while the payer's account at the same time gets debited. The machine has a power source which is a battery that needs to be charged before use. So it works like a phone, used a special sim card from any of the supporting networks like MTN or Glo for connectivity but the processing is made possible by inter-bank transfer systems such as Interswitch or Etranzact.

How do you really operate it?
Well first of all:
- Your POS machine should be fully charged before the business of the day
- Power it on by pressing the button until you hear a beep
- When asked, enter your password which could be some letters such as 123456
- If there is connection, it should connect and be ready to accept payments
- A buyer presents his debit card and you insert it in the card slot
- Let the buyer secretly enter his pin and confirm by pressing enter
- You forward it for processing
- If successful, your account gets credited and 2 receipts are printed
- Cut out the customer's copy and give to him while you cut out the merchant's copy for your records and for reconciling with your bank if necessary.
- You could also sign up with your bank for sms notifications so you get an sms for every payment made into your account on the POS.

Personal experience
I was privileged to be at a company where a POS was recently installed and the transaction sailed through smoothly although it was a test transaction and the payment that was made was just N0.01k. When you get your own POS machine, you can try it out too with your ATM or other debit card, it works and it's cashless.

If your business normally receives huge amounts of money from customers, it's probably better if you start using POS machines to accept card payments rather than carrying cash.

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Comments:
Re: How to accept payments using P.O.S. machines Reply by salisu ilerioluwa on Monday March 24, 2014 at 13:59:5:

interesting! It's one of d best nd more convinient means of making cashless payment

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Comments:
Re: How to accept payments using P.O.S. machines Reply by Francisca on Thursday July 26, 2018 at 2:32:42:

How can i get one p.o.s for my business

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Re: How to accept payments using P.O.S. machines Reply by Felix on Thursday July 26, 2018 at 2:32:42:

You can get it from your bank

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