How to connect a chip and pin machine to a PC

Most of us are now familiar with the chip and pin technology. A lot of retailers use a manual chip and pin terminal which is “stand alone” and requires the operator to re-key the transaction details into the terminal. How do we link a chip and pin terminal to a PC computer?

To do this you need a special sort of chip and pin machine which is capable of integrating with a PC, and special software which runs on the PC to process the transactions and talk to the chip and pin terminal.

Most stand-alone chip and pin system cannot be linked to the computer as an afterthought – if you want your chip and pin solution to be integrated with you retail system, you have to consider this from the outset – it is not a feature you can add later without getting a whole new chip and pin solution.

Aside from actually getting the correct chip and pin hardware and software, how does the chip and pin machine actually connect to the computer

Modern computers talk almost exclusively to external devices via a USB port. Most modern PCs come with a large number of USB ports for connecting printers and cameras. Unfortunately , USB technology hasn’t got very far in the world of chip and pin.

The large majority of chip and pin terminals still rely on an RS232 serial port connection – the ubiquitous COM1: connection. However, hardware manufacturers are hell bent on disposing of serial and parallel connectors from modern computers.

The normal solution to this problem is an Serial-USB converter. This is a small dongle which plugs into the serial port on the computer and creates and extra serial port. It seems faintly absurd that after decades of making computers with serial ports, the hardware manufacturers now insist on you buying extra hardware to have this common feature.

Most serial port chip and pin machines will work OK with USB serial converters. The devices appears like a normal serial port to software running on a computer. However, there are a few different makes of the chipsets that serial to USB converters rely upon. I normally find that whilst one USB to serial converter will work fine in one situation, it will not work in a different situation. Sometimes you have to buy two or three different serial to USB converters before you find one that works with your chip and pin machine.

It is always annoying when the engineer turns up on site for an expensive visit, only to find he cannot connect the chip and pin machine because of a lack of serial ports. Ask these questions in advance and make sure that you’ve got the correct adapters on the day.

Another disappointing side effect is that third party integrated chip and pin suppliers will often not support their devices working via a usb-serial adapter. Although you’ll find it works most of the time, as soon as something goes wrong the support department will just point at the usb-serial converter and laugh.

How suppliers of chip and pin machines expect anything to work when they insist on supplying hardware which does not have a USB port and computer makes keep giving us USB ports and doing away with serial ports is anybody’s guess!

One of the reasons for the persistence of serial devices is that an RS232 serial port is a known quantity, and extremely reliable and isolated, whereas USB is newer and more likely to cause problems with other devices plugged into the computer – however, somebody needs to get on and solve these problems so that integrated chip and pin is easier to connect to a PC computer.