Why doesn't my Point of Sale work with my business phone?

Verify the connection For phone line connected systems, check if you have a dial tone on your other phones or fax machine. If the other phone lines and fax machine work, ensure nothing is unplugged on the payment terminal or at the wall outlet. If the phone line for your payment system is shared with other equipment, check to see if there is a dial tone on the other equipment. If your terminal connects via Internet, see Why doesn't my Point of Sale work with the Internet in the Internet support section.

Call waiting Call waiting presents as a beeping tone during your call to advise you somebody else is on the line. This will interrupt a debit transaction if a phone line is shared with a payment system. Make sure to disable call waiting on any shared lines to prevent the potential for failed transactions because someone is trying to reach you. Call waiting can be disabled two ways:

1. In the phone portal in My Shaw under Privacy > While on a call,

2. You can call into Technical Support and request to have it disabled.

Voicemail waiting indicator The voicemail waiting indicator, which sounds like a stuttering tone when you first pick up the phone line, may cause the debit terminal to think the line is in use or broken. If you have a voicemail, check and delete the message and try again. If this is, indeed, the cause of your POS not working, check with your terminal supplier to see if it can be programmed to ignore the voicemail indicator. However, please note that some terminals cannot be programmed this way. Message waiting indicators can also be disabled through the phone portal in My Shaw under Voicemail Settings.

Baud rate Have the payment terminal supplier set the terminal to 9600 baud rate. This issue is very rare but if the phone line is clear, meaning that there is no call waiting or voicemail waiting stutter tone, and transactions are still failing, this may resolve the issue.

Shared lines Since a phone line can only do one thing at a time, make sure your shared phone line isn’t already in use. This does not apply to a dedicated phone line but many businesses will have other equipment sharing the line, such as fax machines, phone, and alarms. Phones and fax machines are usually more obvious points to check, but alarm panels may not be.

Testing direct into the phone terminal To be sure there’s no issue with a line being tied up by other services or by a building wiring issue, you can bypass everything by following the steps on How to connect a phone directly to the phone terminal.