title: Retail point of sale credit card processing - card present. Minimizing PCI compliance requirements
body: <p>I am writing a point of sale application for a client who has some very specific needs. The client is a retail store, so when they process credit cards, they have a physical card present and can swipe it. The way it is now, at the end of check out, it presents the cashier with a total, and the cashier keys the total into a credit card terminal (by hand--it is not connected to the computer), swipes the card at the terminal and then when the payment is processed, the cashier presses the "Paid by Credit Card" and it prints a receipt.</p>
  
  <p>The problem is that hand keying in totals is time consuming and prone to errors. I'd much rather have my program transmit the amount to a credit card terminal and then get a message when the transaction has been processed. I don't want to touch any card holder information (card number, etc) because I want to stay outside of PCI. All I want to do is send an amount and get back an "accepted" or "declined". You'd think this would be common, but I seem to have failed to find information. (For example, authorize.net's card present API requires me to collect and transmit the card number. I don't want to collect and transmit the card number. I want to transmit an amount and have someone else collect and transmit the card number and notify me when the process is complete.)</p>
  
  <p>Does anyone have a solution for this? Has anyone worked with Verifone or Ingenico's hardware? I don't care if I'm sending the number of a physical terminal connected via USB or to a virtual software terminal. I just don't want to be the terminal myself, so that I'm not anywhere in the chain of card data.</p>