Now that our ensemble has progressed a bit further down the track and we are taking publicity, ticketing, and sales into our own hands... we need to have infrastructure and hardware to take door payments. Sure, some of the people still pay in cash (and that is nice...) and zero in crypto... but the vast majority prefer cards, and that means that you need to have a provider that will be able to handle that. I had heard decent things about Square doing it... and they have inexpensive hardware that allows you to read and process card payments for a pretty small fee.

Sure, they have some nicer looking payment hardware options available... such as the larger readers, but all we need is a little Tile reader that pairs with an old crappy phone that has serviceable Bluetooth. For the first concert live trial, we did it all with manual entries for the payments... which is slightly annoying, but for future concerts I will make sure that I have it ready and set up to easily have the various ticket types and prices easily accessible. It isn't completely necessary, but it does make life easier for whoever we have volunteering at the door!

The actual reader hardware (POS... hehe, Piece of S#%$... or is it Proof of Stake?)... is just a little thing smaller than your palm with a little NFC reader and a Bluetooth connection to your phone. At the moment, I have the phone connecting to my real phone's hotspot.... as time goes on, and if it is actually required, I will give it its own SIM card... maybe, it really isn't that critical... as long as it can access the internet somehow.

The reader also has a small battery, which is more than enough for our use case... but for our first trial, I made sure that the front of house also had a spare battery on hand... just in case! After all, when you are fussing around with last minute stage stuff, you don't also want to be fussing around with non-concert things!

I did do a test transaction at home just to make sure that everything was up and running as intended. A little ten cent transaction made it off my card and into our escrow account which was then later transferred to our business account. So, no problems.

I did find it a little bit hilarious (and not exactly confidence inspiring...) to see the reader updating percentage meter running above 100 percent! I know that numbers aren't really everyone's strong suit... but that sort of thing shouldn't be happening!

So, after the first concert live trial... everything worked without a hitch! I was pretty happy, as I had read of other people having had extended problems... but I do wonder if they were more technical problems from people who aren't that familiar with technology? Hard to say... but at least we had no problems.

So, another little step on the way to having our little musical ensemble up and ready to take on the world! Well, at least out little tiny corner of it!

I can also be found cross-posting at:
Hive
Steem
Publish0x

Handy Crypto Tools

Ledger Nano S/X: Keep your crypto safe and offline with the leading hardware wallet provider. Not your keys, not your crypto!
Binance: My first choice of centralised exchange, featuring a wide variety of crypto and savings products.
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CoinList: Access to early investor and crowdsale of vetted and reserached projects.
Cointracking: Automated or manual tracking of crypto for accounting and taxation reports.
KuCoin: I still use this exchange to take part in the Spotlight and Burning Drop launches.