Payment processing for unattended businesses

Car washes, vending, parking, laundromats, self-storage, EV charging and kiosks of all kinds. The details differ, but the needs are alike: customers who want to pay quickly, operators who need dependable deposits and a payments partner who answers the phone when something goes wrong.

Reliability. An outage at an unattended location is lost revenue and a frustrated customer. The payment path has to stay up when nobody is there to reset it.

Security. Unattended devices are targets. Encryption, tokenization and monitoring are part of the answer.

Recurring plans. Memberships are common, and billing them smoothly matters as much as the first sale.

Support that understands the setup. Hardware, software and processing all have to work together, and the people you call have to know all three.

1. 1Start the sale. A customer starts a wash, a session or a purchase at a pay station, kiosk, gate or app.
2. 2Pay. They tap, dip or enter a card, or pay through an app, and the terminal requests authorization.
3. 3Authorize. The gateway routes the request and returns an approval in real time.
4. 4Run and settle. The service starts, funds settle to the operator on schedule, and members are billed automatically.

Many unattended businesses now run on monthly plans. That means recurring billing has to handle sign-ups, plan changes, pauses and the failed payments that come with any membership model. Customers also want to know why they were charged. Good recurring billing keeps members paying and keeps support questions small.

• Card testing, where stolen cards are tried at a terminal to see which work.
• Skimming devices attached to readers to capture card data.
• Chargebacks from customers who do not recognize a self-serve charge.
• Failed or declined cards left in a retry loop.

Tokenization, secure payment devices and ongoing monitoring help reduce these risks, and clear transaction descriptions help customers recognize charges.

• A gateway that supports both card-present terminals and online or app payments.
• Recurring billing and saved payment methods for memberships.
• Tokenization and monitoring to protect unattended devices.
• Support that understands hardware, software and processing together.
• Honest answers about whether your existing equipment will work.

If you build software for unattended businesses, we can support your platform through linq and our payment gateway. See how we help car wash and unattended software.

We have helped businesses accept payments since 2004, including the practical side of unattended operations: how devices behave in the weather, what operators ask, and how to keep a location running when no one is there. Our team works with yours to keep payments dependable, and we give you a straight answer about your hardware before you commit.