Card payments

This page is about taking a card on the Musqet terminal: the sale itself, what a decline is telling you, receipts, and putting a double charge right.

Two kinds of terminal are in the field, and most of what follows is the same on both. Where they differ, this page says so. The clearest difference is pre-authorisation, which is available only on a PAX terminal, and only where it is switched on for your business. A few finer points, such as exactly when a receipt prints and whether a sale can be part-approved, also depend on the terminal and its settings, and are flagged where they matter.

Taking a card payment

You key the amount on the terminal and confirm it. If tips are switched on for that terminal, the tip prompt comes first (see Tips). The card reader then takes over and captures the card. The customer decides how to pay at the reader by tapping, inserting the chip, or swiping, and enters a PIN if the card asks for one. Musqet does not choose the method; the reader does.

When it is done, the terminal shows one of five results:

Approved. The sale went through for the full amount.
Partially approved. On terminals that support it, the card only had part of the amount available, so only part was taken. The terminal then offers to take the rest on another card, cancel and void what was taken, or mark the balance as paid another way, so nothing is left half-charged without a choice.
Declined. The card was refused. See When a card is declined.
Sale failed. The sale could not be started, for example the amount was rejected or the card could not be read. Nothing was charged, so you can try again.
Payment status unknown. The terminal could not confirm what happened, usually after a connection drop or a problem at the card network. The payment may still have gone through, so the screen warns you not to run the sale again on another device and to check your dashboard first. See If the terminal goes offline and A payment taken twice.

Most card sales are card-present, with the card at the terminal to tap, insert or swipe. A card can also be keyed in by hand for a telephone or mail order; see Keying a card in by hand.

The authorisation code

An approved sale carries an authorisation code from the card issuer. It is shown on the result screen and printed on the receipt. It is the reference the issuer recognises for that specific approval, so it is the thing to quote if a customer or their bank ever queries whether a payment was authorised.

Cancelling a sale in progress

To stop a sale before the customer has paid, cancel it on the card reader using its own cancel button, or by walking away from the PIN prompt without entering one. The terminal treats that as a cancellation: the result screen is not shown, and nothing is charged. There is no separate cancel button in the Musqet screen for an attended sale, because the reader owns the card at that point.

When a card is declined

A decline is the card issuer saying no, not the terminal failing. The terminal shows the issuer’s reason in plain words. The common ones are:

Insufficient funds (51) — the account cannot cover it. The customer can try another card.
Expired card (54) — the card is past its date.
Closed account (46): the account behind the card has been closed, so nothing can be charged to it. The customer will need a different card.
Do not honour (05) — a general refusal from the issuer with no specific reason given. Another card, or the customer’s bank, is the next step.
Pick up card / keep card — the issuer has flagged the card, often as lost (41) or stolen (43). Follow your normal procedure; do not force the sale.
Suspected fraud (59) — the issuer has blocked it. Ask for another means of payment.
Security code wrong (N7): the security code does not match the card. This one only comes up on a card keyed in by hand, so check the digits with the customer and key them in again (see Keying a card in by hand).

A decline is safe: no money moves, and the customer can simply try again or use a different card.

Pre-authorisation

Pre-authorisation lets you reserve an amount on a card now and take the money later, for a deposit or a bar tab. It is available only on a PAX terminal, and only when pre-authorisation is enabled for your business. If it is not, the option does not appear on the menu.

Where it is available, the terminal Menu has three actions:

Pre-authorise — reserve an amount on the card. This holds the funds but does not take them.
Complete pre-authorisation — take the final amount against an earlier reservation. It can be the amount reserved or less.
Cancel pre-authorisation — release a reservation you are not going to charge, so the hold on the customer’s card is lifted. You can scan the pre-authorisation’s code to find it.

Paying in the customer’s own currency

Where this is switched on for your business, a foreign card may offer to charge in its own home currency rather than yours. This is the card scheme’s feature, not Musqet’s: the reader handles the offer and the exchange rate, and Musqet simply records and prints what came back. If it is not enabled for you, a foreign card is charged in your own currency as normal.

When it happens, the customer copy of the receipt shows the converted currency and amount, the exchange rate, the mark-up and the scheme’s disclaimer, so the customer can see exactly what they agreed to. The merchant copy leaves the mark-up and disclaimer off. Musqet neither sets the rate nor takes the mark-up, so there is nothing to configure here.

Receipts

Where auto-print is enabled on the terminal, an approved sale prints a receipt on its own. Which copy prints, and whether a copy prints on a sale that was not approved, depend on the terminal and its print settings, so do not rely on either. On the result screen you can always print either copy yourself, using Print merchant copy and Print customer copy, and if auto-print is switched off that is how every receipt is produced. If the terminal is out of paper it says so rather than failing quietly. The customer copy carries your receipt logo, if you have set one, and ends with Powered by Musqet.

To send the receipt instead of printing it, choose Email, enter the customer’s address and send. The terminal builds the receipt and emails it. An address that is not valid is refused before sending.

Which cards you can take

The terminal takes Visa, Mastercard and American Express, by contactless, chip or swipe. Apple Pay and Google Pay work too, as contactless: the phone stands in for the card. The sale and receipt show the card brand and that it was tapped, inserted or swiped, but not the wallet name, so a wallet tap reads as a contactless Visa or Mastercard rather than as “Apple Pay”.

The exact set a given terminal accepts is set on the device by the acquirer, not in Musqet, so this page cannot pin a fixed list: it is whatever your terminal is configured for.

Keying a card in by hand

Some sales are taken without the card being tapped, inserted or swiped: a telephone or mail order, where the customer reads their card details out and you key them in. This is often called MOTO (mail order / telephone order), a normal, everyday way to take a payment.

Key the amount and confirm it as usual (if tips are switched on, the tip prompt comes first). The card reader takes over and waits for a card; instead of tapping or inserting, choose the manual entry option and key in the card number, expiry and security code as the customer reads them out. Card capture, keyed entry included, is handled by the terminal’s own card-processing software, so the option appears on the card reader rather than in a Musqet screen, and Musqet never sees or stores the card number.

If your terminal does not offer manual entry, contact Musqet support.

What Musqet does not offer

Turning a phone into a card reader. Taking a contactless card on a phone with no terminal needs separate payment software that Musqet does not run, so contactless on a phone is not available. Take the card at a Musqet terminal, or key it in by hand for a telephone or mail order (see Keying a card in by hand).
A card surcharge. Adding a fee to the bill because the customer paid by card is not permitted for the cards Musqet takes where it operates, so there is no surcharge setting. The price the customer pays is the price you set, however they choose to pay.

Unattended (kiosk) payments

In kiosk mode the terminal takes card payments without a member of staff at the screen, for a self-service point. Card sales are driven for the customer, and the result is handled the same way as an attended sale.

A refund in kiosk mode is treated more carefully: where your setup requires it, a refund has to be approved by a staff member on the device before it will run, so an unattended terminal cannot refund on its own. See Refunds.

If the terminal goes offline

If the terminal loses its connection to the network, it notices and tries to come back online on its own. Two situations follow from a drop:

The connection is down before a sale. The terminal cannot reach the card network, so the sale cannot be authorised and shows an error. Wait for it to reconnect and try again.
The connection drops mid-sale, so the outcome is unknown. This is the important one. Rather than assume the sale failed and risk charging the customer twice, the terminal checks back with the network on that sale’s reference to find out what really happened, and reports the true outcome. If it still cannot confirm, it shows Payment status unknown and warns you not to run the sale again on another device; check your dashboard before retrying. See A payment taken twice.

A payment taken twice

Most of the time a double charge is prevented rather than corrected. When a sale times out or its outcome is uncertain, the terminal does not blindly retry: it looks the sale up by its reference first, and if what comes back does not match the sale it was expecting, it treats that as an error instead of a second charge. Where it cannot confirm the outcome at all, it shows Payment status unknown and tells you not to run the sale again on another device, because the most common way a customer is charged twice is a payment that looked failed being retaken on a separate machine. Check your dashboard to see whether the first attempt went through before retrying.

If a card genuinely is charged twice, the fix is to void the extra charge:

On the sale’s result screen, choose Cancel and void. Voiding needs the void password, so a duplicate cannot be reversed by just anyone.
A voided charge is removed before it settles, so it does not reach the customer’s statement or your takings.

The card network has its own signals for this too. A duplicate transaction reason (94) or a duplicate authorisation error (64500) on a sale is the network telling you the same payment has already gone through, so the second one should be voided rather than taken again.

When something goes wrong

Match what the person is seeing.

What they see	What it means	What to do
The card was declined	The issuer refused it, for a reason shown on screen	Read the reason above; the customer can try another card
Pick up card / keep card	The issuer has flagged the card as lost or stolen	Follow your procedure; do not force the sale
Partially approved	The card only had part of the amount	Take the rest on another card, or cancel and void
Payment status unknown	The outcome could not be confirmed, so nothing was assumed	Do not run the sale again on another device; check your dashboard to see whether it went through, and void any duplicate. See If the terminal goes offline
The customer was charged twice	A duplicate charge got through	Cancel and void the extra one with the void password
Pre-authorise is not on the menu	You are not on a PAX terminal, or the feature is off for your business	Pre-authorisation is PAX only and has to be enabled for the business
Nothing printed after an approved sale	The terminal is out of paper, or the result was uncertain	Refill the paper and reprint from the result screen
The amounts look wrong	The customer paid in their card’s own currency	The receipt shows the converted amount and rate; this is the card’s own conversion, not Musqet’s
A customer wants to pay by phone or post	You need to key the card in by hand	See Keying a card in by hand