Wireless Moves the Cash Register Where You Are

When Michelle Dubé, a golf instructor in Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., finishes a lesson, she whips out her BlackBerry wireless device - to schedule the next appointment, sure, but also to swipe the student's credit card for payment right there on the driving range.

It takes only a few seconds, and it saves Ms. Dubé a trip to the bank to deposit a check or a fistful of cash. Plus, her clients like it. "They're just surprised - they're like, 'Wow, you're a techno-wizard,' " she said.

A BlackBerry device with a swipe attachment. Such mobile terminals are gaining in popularity as wireless networks become more reliable.

The novelty may soon wear off. Plumbers, limousine drivers, flea market proprietors and merchants of all sizes and stripes are beginning to take credit and debit cards in odd places, often using nothing more than an ordinary cellphone and a card swipe attachment, or a handheld device with a built-in swipe slot. Now that wireless networks span the nation and devices that tap into them are cheap and reliable, expectations for the technology are running high outside these niches.

Already in some restaurants a waiter will swipe a credit card tableside (a practice that is widespread in Europe), and some car rental companies use hand-held devices to check people out when they return cars. A day could soon come when a clerk at a large department store will ask customers in the aisle if they would like to check out there, or a shopping cart at the grocery will have a built-in scanner and card reader.

"It's a whole new world that's opening," said Doug Byerley, a senior vice president at the First Data Corporation, the nation's largest credit card processor, "and it's all being brought about because of wireless communications."

Wireless credit card acceptance is not new. But within the last year or two, as wireless companies have improved their networks and hand-held devices have come down in price, the technology has started to look like an attractive alternative to dial-up payment machines. Indeed, previous generations of mobile terminals had a reputation for losing signal connections and breaking.

Domino's Pizza has experimented with wireless terminals and has so far rejected them. "We found in the early tests it was hard for drivers to drive if they had these things on their belts," said Tim McIntyre, a spokesman for Domino's. "In the course of working in a car and a pizza store, some of these things weren't as durable as they needed to be, and once they were manufactured to be durable enough, they were no longer cost-effective."

Domino's does accept credit cards by telephone and gives customers receipts to sign at the front door, "but we haven't reached the point where we just walk up and you just swipe your card," Mr. McIntyre said.

On the other end of the spectrum is Sonic, the chain of drive-in restaurants that is halfway through an effort, begun two years ago, to install satellite-based credit card terminals at its 3,000 outlets. With the technology, customers can pull up, order meals, pay on the spot by credit or debit card, then wait for a carhop to deliver the food and a receipt.

Without the technology, Sonic customers who want to pay with plastic have to wait for two visits from the carhop, one to take the card indoors to process it and another to deliver the food and receipt, said Mitchell W. Gregory, chief information officer at Sonic, which is based in Oklahoma City. It takes 30 seconds to process a card payment using the landlines, he said, and 6 seconds using the satellite terminals.

"There's a whole step that's eliminated, plus the consumer doesn't lose control of their card," Mr. Gregory said.

Retailers of all sizes, including Sonic, have found that customers tend to spend more money when they are not limited by the amount of cash in their wallets. Greg Crance, who sells hot dogs from a boat in the Delaware River to tourists who raft and canoe there in the summer, said revenue had been higher since he bought a cellphone that accepts credit cards five years ago. And he worries less about employee theft, because his system notifies him of all card sales and gives him a daily total.

Mr. Crance, or the Famous River Hot Dog Man, anchors his concessions stand off Resolution Island in Pennsylvania. "We have a big sign that says, 'We take credit cards,' and people think we're, like, lying," he said.

Security is not a concern, because the wireless devices convey account information with the same heavy level of encryption as plugged-in terminals, if not more. And for merchants that normally phone in customers' credit card numbers for approval, there are price breaks: banks charge retailers a lower rate when the actual card is swiped and the account information is conveyed electronically.

"The average cost per merchant on a monthly basis is to , which in most cases is less than the cost of a phone line," said Paul Rasori, vice president for marketing at VeriFone, a terminal maker San Jose, Calif.

For small merchants, a cellphone equipped with card-acceptance software can cost as little as 0 or 0, which can often be recouped through higher sales volumes or lower card-acceptance fees.