What is an offshore offline POS terminal?

An offline POS terminal or a PIN PAD and is a physical device with the ability to charge a card without the presence of a credit or debit card holder from a tax-free jurisdiction. As you can imagine, this type of terminal is very difficult to obtain due to uncontrolled and unjustified charges that can be made through it causing numerous claims to the financial entity.

Note that offline POS terminals have no limits on the amounts that can be charged from the cards as long as the amounts don’t exceed the maximum of an authorized credit line. That is, if a card has a monthly credit limit of 5000 GBP and the merchant tries to charge more than that, the transaction will be declined automatically, and no payment will be made to your trading account.

To request an offline POS terminal, the bank requests a clear description of the commercial activity that the merchant will carry out. In case the bank detects some type of high-risk money laundering activity, it will decline the offline terminal. In reference to the processing system we inform you that it is real and there is no risk of losing money since this type of terminals is usually provided by top-level banking entities with high solvency ratios.

In reference to the entity that will receive the payments, when you hire the offline terminal you will have signed a contract with a regulated financial entity that will provide the POS. Therefore, the money from the credit card charges will be transferred to the bank account where you have contracted the terminal. Usually the period of liquidation of funds is from 1-3 working days but if the bank considers that merchant’s activity as of high risk, the funds could be retained for up to 4 weeks. The bank also reserves the right to pledge a certain amount of money to avoid situations that endanger the bank and avoid irregular operations.

You can review the funds of the payments received by card at the control panel of the software of the bank and can transfer them to another bank account of any country in the world without any problem. You can also use the debit cards issued by the bank to be able to withdraw the money in any ATM.

The requirements that banks set for offshore offline POS terminals are:

1. Detailed description of the commercial activity: What do you sell? What are the countries where you sell your service or product? Are your clients physical or legal persons?
2. Video of the facilities explaining how the terminal will be used and where it will be used.
3. Indicate how many years you have been working on the market.
4. Estimate of total monthly amounts that will be processed through the POS terminal, including minimum and maximum amounts.
5. Countries where debit and credit cards are issued.
6. Types of cards that will be processed: Visa, Visa Electron, MasterCard, Amex, Diners Club, JCB Maestro or Discover.
7. Currency in which you will accept the payments and justification why you need to work in the selected currency.
8. Web site where the bank can verify the commercial activity of the merchant.
9. Projected sales for first 6 months after contracting the POS terminal.