ePay Wireless - "Swipe Only" vs. Printing Solutions When choosing the cellular phone/PDA-based hardware that will best fit your business needs, there are two basic options; "swipe-only" and printing. Swipe-only solutions consist of a magnetic card reader that attaches to a bankcard processing compatible phone through the phone's serial port. The swipe-only solution is receiving a real-time electronic response from the credit card processor and, when approved, the transaction is stored in the merchant's current batch for settlement. What this solution does not provide is a paper receipt. There are two basic benefits of a "swipe-only" configuration:  Cost Because there is no expense for a print mechanism the hardware cost of a swipe-only solution is considerably less than that of a traditional printing unit.  Convenience The small size of the magentic card reader enables the user to attach the reader to the phone and still maintain a "friendly" size. Even with the card reader attached, the phone can still be worn on a belt clip or hung on a dash board clip with very little resistance. What type of merchant would benefit from a swipe-only solution? Because of the lack of a paper transaction receipt, the swipe-only solution is ideal for those business' whom already provide a paper invoice or work order to their customers. In these cases, the merchant can simply add the credit card authorization verbiage to their existing paperwork which will provide proper authorization of the transaction as well as a receipt to the customer. Other merchant types that could benefit from a swipe-only solution are those business' that do very few transactions where a receipt could be issued with a traditional manual imprinter. This mode of providing transaction receipts can become cumbersome and merchant's processing more than a handfull of transactions per day are urged to process payments using an electronic printer. Printing solutions are the popular choice among the majority of mobile merchants. There are a number of printing models available including: a ruggedized unit for those merchants requiring more durability, very small hand-held units for merchant's truly on-the-go and table-top friendly units for merchant's processing transactions in environments such as trade shows, craft fairs, festivals and swap meets. All of our available printing units have thermal print mechanisms with a built-in magentic card reader. The units are tethered to the cell phone or PDA for reliability and convenience. If you have any questions or concerns regarding wireless payment processing please do not hesitate to contact us at 1-877-493-3729.