Incoming Fax and Credit Card Machine Processing

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 19, 2005 Posts: 2

We are considering Vonage for our primary phone 'line'. Is there an internet site/forum to visit to answer following questions?:

1. Will I be able to receive faxes?

2. Will I be able to use Vonage to process credit card transactions? I have two credit card machines One for mail order is a Tranz 380, used to manually enter credit card payments direct to merchant services provider. The second machine is called a 'Hypercom' terminal. It collects the credit card info (i.e. we physically swipe the cards) but it is an off-line machine (used at art festivals, where there is no phone hook-up). After all transactions are in, we batch transfer the data to the merchant processor.

I have a feeling VOIP may not work, particularly for item #2.

Any real life experience out there? Our sites to view for additional information.

Thanks.

P.S. We have Comcast Broadband and wireless network.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 02, 2005 Posts: 2

Receiving doesn't seem to be a problem for anyone but sending is. I am setting up the credit card system tomorrow. I will write back to let you know if it works.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 19, 2005 Posts: 2

Thanks, looking forward to your results.

Posts: 36 · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 12:27 am Post subject:

I've had no problems sending or receiving faxes.

Here's the basic idea of telecommunications:

Pots lines use old switches. The actually flip-flop back and forth in order for one switch to handle multiple contacts (calls) at the same time.
We can't hear these flip-flops but electronic equipment can.
Example: You can't see the screen flicker on your monitor but did you know it's called a RASTER SCAN monitor? It actually only paints ONE pixel at a time! But does so very fast that our eyes can't pick it up... watch the evening news and see monitors in the background...they flicker like crazy. That's because the electronic equipment can see and hear better than we can.
How does this effect modems etc? Simple. The modems and faxes can "hear" the POTS switches flipping and flopping. so they slow down a bit and keep doing so until they get an error-free connection.
This is why certain modems would have a 19.2 connection and others would have a 42K connection etc.

Posts: 28 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Nov 10, 2004 Posts: 28

I use a Hypercom T7P for credit card processing through Vonage and a Linksys PAP2, it works fine. Credit card terminals use VERY SLOW data rates since there's not much to transmit and the negotiation times are MUCH faster for 1200/2400 baud service than, say, 33.6 or V.92.

Fax machines transmit at either 9600 or 14.4 (G3). Vonage also works fine with my G3 fax machine.

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 09, 2005 Posts: 3

I read your post and I'm going through this with a large merchant of our own. The answer is no, not with you're current processing equipment. You need a TRUE analog line for either terminal to work. I have been in constant contact with Verifone and Hypercom regarding this issue. Please ask any questions that may help.

Posts: 1

I am the lead technician for a credit card merchant services company. Your credit card machine will not work properly over any LAN phone service. there are terminals out there that you can use over ethernet however. the ones that work the best this way are the omni 3750's.
If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 20, 2005 Posts: 5

I attempted to use my Tranz 330 credit card terminal on my Vonage line. The Tranz reported lost comm w/ host about 50% of the time. This was unacceptable, so I switched the Tranz back to POTS (100% reliability).

Posts: 134 · Vonage Representative Joined: Apr 15, 2005 Posts: 134

The reason why most Fax/Tivo/Alarm/CC machine (anything with a dialing modem) sometimes fails is for a few reasons.

Theres no such thing as "it just won't work). With the proper settings, and a good quality internet connection (this is vital because if your i-net line is poor, you can turn off all the features you want and then some, chances are, it wont work)

- The dialing speed can be too high, the VoIP backbone does not support high dialing speeds. We are, however, soon upgrading to a new data process protocol, which will work ALOT better.

- There are "features" on the line called "echo cancelling". What this does is as far as voice goes, obviously, it cancels out any echos. The potential problem this creates for data, is when the modem is "dialing" it makes those "weird sounds" (we all heard a dial-up modem at one point in our lives) and recognizes it as an "echo" and tries to cancel it out. We can turn these features off, but then call quality is decreased. So its a win/lose situation. There are alternatives. You can get a dedicated fax line which normally isn't used for audio calls so we can turn them off b/c your not concerned with the quality of your voice bc its for data only. Also we are trying to get approval to turn these features off on a per call basis, aka sending an occasional fax / tivo dialing out (it would be a prefix like *99 and *70) so they will turn back on once the call hangs up.

--Note. Only the linksys devices support the echo canceling features.

Hoped that helped somewhat

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Apr 20, 2005 Posts: 2

I have had hit or miss luck with my fax machine and my tranz 380 over Vonage. I understand that the technology is relatively new and that there will be issues but my only problem is that Vonage or other VoIP providers don't make this clear while signing up. They claim that you get a free fax line with their business plan and it seems like a great deal, but then the business goes to VoIP only to find out that their fax line/CC processing is no longer reliable.

Voice quality is great and I'm extremely happy, but there should be an asterisk next to Free Fax Line! If I would've known before hand I wouldn't have dropped my analog line.