All you need to know about Portable Debit Card Machines
How much more efficient has the restaurant experience become since portable debit card machines were introduced?
Before portable debit card machines, the patron had to get up and walk their bill over to the cash desk, present their card, run it through the machine and wait for confirmation. No big deal, right? It became a bigger deal when the line of people waiting to pay began to snake through the middle of the dining room. Then it moved from big deal to big problem when the people in line got impatient.
If this still sounds familiar to you as a restaurant, the time to change over is now. Dine-in patrons expect restaurants to have portable debit card machines brought to their tables after their meal.
This expectation being set in restaurants is expanding into other areas, including:
- Retail: Apple stores started the trend and it’s catching on. Retail stores are expanding their existing footprints by getting rid of stationary payment stations.
- Attended outdoor parking lots and drive-throughs: Portable debit card machines on the end of a long pole keep both the attendant and the driver shielded from the cold during the transaction.
- Festivals: Lines move faster for tickets, merch and food. This comes in handy when your favourite band’s about to take the stage and you want to make it back quickly.
- Sunday markets: So many more random passers-by will become customers when vendors accept debit cards.

Like anything else, portable debit card machines have pros and cons.
Before you swap your stationary debit card machines for portable debit card machines, consider both the positives and negatives of your new capability.
Three big wins of having portable debit card machines.
Firstly, and probably most importantly, is an increase in efficiency. Customers pay faster and are out quicker, making room for new customers to spend more. Suddenly a server or retail associate putting through $250 of sales per hour is now putting $325 of sales per hour, simply by creating more time for people to buy.
Another big win is, of course, the portability. In retail specifically, it’s a real leg up on opposite ends of their special experiences. On the one hand, public-facing sidewalk sales are easier to work when payment can be brought to customers wherever they’re standing. On the other, private trunk shows get more lucrative when the guest of honour can buy without getting off their chaise lounge.
A third (albeit less evident) win is the ability to track your sales staff’s transaction volumes on the portable debit card machines they’re carrying for the day. You could use the data to identify top sellers, create training programs for underperformers.
And three challenges of having portable debit card machines.
A big one is reliance on a strong Wi-Fi signal. The more unreliable it is, the more trouble you may have processing transactions. Along those same lines, portable debit machines have more componentry than stationary machines (for instance, the Wi-Fi capability), which means more could potentially go wrong.
Another is the learning curve for your sales staff, depending on the portable debit card machine you choose. You can mitigate the time it takes to get your staff up to speed with an easy-to-use option.
And a third, which is becoming a challenge every day, is portable debit card machines that can only process debit and credit cards.
In Canada, 97.6% of the population growth is fuelled by immigration. In the US, immigration rates are the highest they’ve been in 20+ years. New Canadians and Americans are bringing over their preferred methods of payment with them, and they’re looking for retailers that can accept international e-wallets like WeChat Pay, Alipay, or others from the ever-growing World of PaymentsTM.
All this to say that if you’re planning an upgrade to portable debit card machines, consider using it as an opportunity to upgrade even further.

Shopping for portable debit card machines? Look for this one feature.
While close to 1.5 billion people are already well-accustomed to making purchases with QR codes, the practice of QR code payment is still in its nascent stages here. But the evidence is more than clear that QR code payment will be a popular payment option for customers in the future because it’s safer, easier and more accessible.
QR codes are everywhere, and North American customers are using them. Some portable debit card machines are also QR code readers. Some aren’t. Look for one that is.
The OTT Pay Smart Terminal is a sleek & powerful device that accepts the widest range of payment methods. Not only is it a portable Debit and Credit Card Machine, but it also accepts QR-code based payments from popular international e-wallets. Embrace diversity and let your customers choose however they want to pay.