DIY POS System?

Building a fully customer-facing self-checkout POS system for a small produce store. Is there any potential advantage in terms of cost or efficacy for building a DIY system vs something like Square POS and an iPad? I figure regardless you'll have to invest in a dedicated computer, barcode scanner, and card reader, plus some kind of open source inventory management software (even could make something in excel probably). Seems like a lot of labor time and effort for little to no $$ benefit. Room for DIY, or forced to suckle at the corporate teet?

good luck with PCI compliance.

Sell your stuff on darknet for monero, no corporations or taxes involved.

>>5324 >Is there any potential advantage in terms of cost or efficacy for building a DIY system vs something like Square POS and an iPad? I was actually planning to do that kind of project but with tablets and customized android. iPad is usually very unusually expensive, and it's not the best since you can't use high endurance SD cards for the databases. If you use used iPads though, chances are the storage is already unreliable. >Seems like a lot of labor time and effort for little to no $$ benefit. It depends on your area. If you live in highly urban place with little to no small franchises/startups, and every vendor uses their own POS (like Starbucks) then you're out of luck but if your area has a lot of mini startups like a local cafe who don't have a contract to some POS provider, you may sell them your software and system. Where I live, there's lots of small businesses so I think it is feasible. >>5325 Cards aren't very popular where I am so that depends on location.

>>5358 Digital or card, you still need PCI compliance. As the lain said, good fuarrrking luck, you're going to get fuarrrked up the ass like no tomorrow.

>>5324 >>5358 I think you misunderstand the nature of the problem. Yes, you could build a system that reads the card and sends it off into the aether. You could probably even build it better and more secure than the companies that sell those systems at ridiculous markup. But the moment some snot nose kid buys a toy with mommy's credit card and mommy disputes the transaction, a horde of lawyers and bureaucrats will descend upon you and buttfuck you like you wouldn't think possible. That is assuming you can convince the card companies to let you connect to their network in the first place, which is unlikely.

>>5324 >Building a fully customer-facing self-checkout POS system for a small produce store. Is there any potential advantage in terms of cost or efficacy for building a DIY system vs something like Square POS and an iPad? >>5358 >Cards aren't very popular where I am Wait, so what is your plan exacly because I got confused? Are you building a self-checkout POS system that takes mainly/only cash? If you would like to support card payment then like other Lainions said you need certification. Not only PCI (that is the hardware certification if I remember correctly) but Mastercard/Visa/ [Whathever card vendor you want to support] certification of software that process the card payment. I think you have a missconception how this all works. If you want the card data then reading the magstripe is easy, reading a CHIP or Contactless is more complicated (you need hardware that can communicate with the card and software that process that data). You need to be able to talk with the card in both ways to let say process PIN offline. If you get the data from the card then that is just the begining. You need to authorize that with the Visa/Mastercard/Whathever Authorization Host. Now I'm not sure who comunicates with the bank but I think it's you (I could be wrong). You pressent the data gatherd from the card with the authentication transaction cryptogram (that you got from the auth. host) to the bank and then you can get your money. But again like other said you can't just connect to the bank, say that you would like to take some money from the account of this guy that had this card number and think that this will be OK. If you won't have old those certificates (on the hardware you use and software) then card vendors and banks will just refuse to work with you. Buuuuut.... You could go all cyberpunk and think of a way to take bitcoin (or any other cryptocurency) as payment (probably no one would want to use it but that would be a fun thing to see).

I work for a company that makes these self-checkout systems and there's a lot that goes into it. Granted, making a product for someone else requires more polish than something for yourself, but it'd be a lot for sure. I'm not involved in the building of the systems, but I've been there long enough to know all the parts. The hardware peripherals connected to a computer and getting them to read inputs would be the easiest. Like other lains have said, the harder bits are the certs. There are some other companies I've seen who've been PCI certified once and then not bothered to update them when they expire, and they still get business, so maybe room to do that? Obviously a risk. Regarding card payments, our older machines used simple mag stripe readers, but the new ones use a third-party NFC/Chip reader that we purchased from some other company. I guess they do all the work needed with VISA/MC/etc to be able to send the card data around, but the older magstripe ones seemed rather generic. Point being, I'm not sure if you need to deal with the big card companies at all to handle card data. I think in the end, its just if someone would trust you enough to use your system. My company does use a third-party to handle payment processing after all of this hardware/PCI nonsense anyway. So if your goal is to get away from that, you might be out of luck. Offline transactions are easy to do, just store the transmit data somewhere locally and ping for online status. Once its back start throwing the data at the processor again. There's some other headaches that I probably am missing. Feel free to ask questions, but I'm by no means an expert. Not trying to dissuade you; could be a fun project!

How about a non-customer-facing POS system for a small bar? I'm running a small for-fun bar and I'm getting tired of having to count the price on a calculator and check the inventory all the time. Is there some open source system that could help me with that? Just to remember what each person/table ordered, count the price, manage the inventory, ... only cash (+crypto?), no government meddling.

>>5748 Write one and stop expecting people to fix your hobbies for you.

>>5748 This is why spreadsheet software was invented.

>>5749 I already have an idea about how to do it, but it's usually better to use existing software before writing something yourself. Also I don't want to spend weeks by writing some system just to throw it away after one season because my government forces new rules down my throat - they are onto it already, just the corona stopped them for now. >>5751 Not really. In this case you need something usable even by a slightly drunk friend with no training helping me out while I go swap beer barrels. Something with touchscreen and big colourful buttons with icons.

>>5754 >I don't want to So, you're lazy... strange feature for an entrepreneur >just to throw it away And you're selfish for not helping other people... strange for somebody who asks others to solve their problems... >they are onto it already And you're bad at the game, since they're onto you and yet you insist on taking an unnecessary risk... Wish you the best with your future... jumpsuit situation :P

>>5754 Spreadsheets have macros that make all the flashy buttons and input fields. Touch screen is not the best input interface for POS terminal, there is a reason why all cash registers outside of hipster coffee shops use keyboards.

>>5756 In my country pretty much all pubs and bars use these flashy buttons - except for the ones that use paper and pencil since the dawn of time. Cash registers with keyboards are used uniquely in shops afaik. I'll take a look at those macros though, thanks for the tip. >>5755 This is a fun project that I do with friends in our free time for ourselves and neighbours. Not an actual for-profit business. So yes I'm lazy and don't hesitate to ask others for help.

>>5755 > I don't want to spend weeks by writing some system just to throw it away after one season because my government forces new rules down my throat - they are onto it already, just the corona stopped them for now. >>And you're selfish for not helping other people... strange for somebody who asks others to solve their problems... Where is the fact it'd be throwing away effort spent because it's invalidated after one season even selfish? I don't get it. >>And you're bad at the game, since they're onto you and yet you insist on taking an unnecessary risk... fuarrrk kind of game are you even referencing? Lobbying so that your changes and laws get implemented in your government instead of someone else's? I don't even. >Wish you the best with your future... jumpsuit situation :P And now they're working in the space program?

>>5324 I have wondered if there could be a way of adversarial interoperability being integrated into a card (again assuming the merchant won't get into a lawsuit). The Mastercard/Visa/Paypal monopoly is a damn shame.

>>7196 Some banks have options where you can get a custom image printed on your debit card. If you could get all your customers to get a QR code (containing your alternate number, not the actual card number) then you could use a QR scanner to keep track of balances. Same piece of plastic, but a totally separate system. >assuming the merchant won't get into a lawsuit The merchant will definitely get into a lawsuit. Or at least the cards involved would be cancelled if they heard about it. The powers that be will not stand for you encroaching on their turf. As far as using the actual stripe or RFID, it's the same problem as DNS. Sure you can install dnsmasq and setup whatever alternate domains you want, but nobody else is going to use it since the whole point of DNS is that you get the same names as everybody else. You could make your own cards sure, but if they don't work everywhere mastercard/VISA does nobody is going to use them. And if you're making counterfeit cards that do show up as VISA/mastercard they will surely put you in jail.

>>7197 In a way this reminds me of Samsung pay, Google Pay, Apple pay, etc . . The DNS is a good point and I the alternative DNS seems like the abuse potential could be high. Even for a low tech solution (like a bitcoin coin) it seems like the steps are about the same as adopting an alternative POS. But that often means including the gate keepers.

>>5324 if you want to accept bank cards you're going to need something like these motherfuckers, last I heard this company is the only one that sells them for prototype/custom integration purposes. if you're going to take payments in crypto then all bets are off and you can use whatever China soykaf you trust not to fuarrrk your customers over.

>>5363 >PCI compliance doesn't seem to hard to meet compliance, as every store has to as well, like keeping the tills inaccessible to customers. I don't know if software needs to be registered though, which I think you are talking about.

Dont forget it needs to scan coupons too. >>5336 >implyying monero couldnt possibly be corporate owned Heh