thread Re: Take payments offline with no wifi AND no headphone jack on phone? in Archived Discussions (Read Only)

Take payments offline with no wifi AND no headphone jack on phone?

tinspoons — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 14:07:49 GMT

Okay, so I often sell in areas with bad or no service, no WiFi AND my phone does not have a headphone jack. It seems like the answer I've seen is to get the reader, but that only seems to work if I have service or WiFi.

Is there a Square option for offline payments that does NOT require the mag reader?

Re: Take payments offline with no wifi AND no headphone jack on phone?

Belanger_Bagels — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 14:27:37 GMT

Hi @tinspoons ,

On your phone you should be able to do a "Manual Credit Card Entry" without a reader. Make sure you accept "Off Line Purchase" in your settings as well. Hopes that helps 🙂

Cheers!

Re: Take payments offline with no wifi AND no headphone jack on phone?

Anthem — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 15:10:15 GMT

Great question and something that is super useful. I can say at our shop, we do this all the time when on location and we use it as a backup in the shop if internet connections are struggling. Not knowing what device you use I'll provide both solutions I'm aware of.

Offline mode works with magstripe cards only, NOT chip dip or manually entry (details here: https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/5095-process-payments-in-offline-mode).

Using magstripe without an aux jack:

You can get an adapter to convert your device's data connection to an aux input then use the basic magstripe reader from Square.

Apple (Lighntning) - https://tinyurl.com/ycmbcdzp

Android (USB C) - https://tinyurl.com/y2m7dhe7

While the direct answer to your question is no. I'm hoping these suggestions might give you an answer that will help.

Re: Take payments offline with no wifi AND no headphone jack on phone?

tinspoons — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 14:49:48 GMT

Thanks for the reply. In checking the reviews, most say this works but others it doesn't (Ah, Amazon reviews...). I have an Android USB-C connection and I suppose $9 is worth a try.

Re: Take payments offline with no wifi AND no headphone jack on phone?

tinspoons — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 14:54:07 GMT

Thanks for the suggestion. I did know about the manual entry and I suppose my question should have mentioned that. Good in a pinch but as I've discovered, when you start manually entering in the numbers, people get suspicious if you do it or they often can't be bothered and are still suspicious.

But it's also time consuming too and I was hoping for Square to have an easy solution that worked like the mag reader did on my old phone with the headphone jack.

Re: Take payments offline with no wifi AND no headphone jack on phone?

Anthem — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 14:56:44 GMT

Clearly I only have my experience to pull from and can say I use the feature at least once a week for the last few years since Apple dropped the aux jack. I also have staff that uses the USB C version of the same. I will say with the apple lightning solution I did have some basement bargain version that didn't work. Going with a known brand has had no problems.

good luck